)UN 19 1884 



TRIBUTES 



TO THE MEMORY 



OF 



MARTIN LUTHER 



COMPILED AND EDITED 

REV. P. C. CROLL, A. M, 



^ Great men, taken up tn any way, are profitable company." — Carlyle. 



> 



(^ 



V 




PHILADELPHIA : 
G. W. FREDERICK 

1884. 






COPYRIGHT. 



TO 

ALL LOVERS 

AND STUDENTS OF 

LUTHER AND THE TRUTH 

FOR WHICH HE WROUGHT AND WROTE, 

PREACHED AND PRAYED, 

THIS VOLUME IS 

DEDICATED. 



(0 



/£..- 



MARTIN LUTHER. 

That which he knew he uttered, 

Conviction made him strong; 
And with undaunted courage 

He faced and fought the wrong. 
No power on earth could silence him 

Whom love and faith made brave ; 
And though four hundred years have gone. 

Men strew with flowers his grave. /f\ 

A frail child, born to poverty, 

A German miner's son ; 
A poor monk searching in his cell, 

What honors has he won ! 
The nations crown him Faithful, 

A man whom truth made free : 
God give us for these easier times 

More men as real as he ! 

— Marianne Farningham. 



^ 



(") 



PREFACE. 



IT is not necessary to offer an apology for the ap- 
pearance of a book of this kind. Festivities that 
have been so universally and enthusiastically cele- 
brated as the recent quarto-centennial celebration of 
Luther's birth, declare that the great Reformer has a 
warm place in the hearts of the Protestant world. 
The story of his life is known. It has been told in 
hundreds of books, and written in scores of tongues. 
This memorial year has greatly multiplied the number 
of his biographies, and refreshed the account of his 
times. It might be superfluous to write another Life 
of Luther or another History of the Reformation ; 
but a collection of tributes, such as we have here 
brought together, has never been presented to the 
reading public, nor could it have been before the un- 
precedented observances of this Memorial Year. And 
while it may perhaps not be as instructive as history 
or biography, it will be, we flatter ourself to believe, 
equally interesting and even more entertaining. As 
with the ever-changing combinations of the kaleido- 
scope, though but reflections from the same crystal, 
we feel confident many an admirer will amuse himself 
looking over these pages, ever changing, as he will 
find them, while the subject is always the same. 

It is to preserve in a more permanent and conveni- 
ent form many of the thousands of well-said Luther- 

(iii) 



iv PREFACE. 

encomiums that this volume has been prepared, and is 
now launched upon the sea of publication. 

Amid the super-abundance of material furnished, 
by almost every Protestant pulpit, and every editor's 
desk, and every writer's pen, we have experienced no 
small difficulty in the selection, having been circum- 
scribed by our purpose and necessarily limited in time, 
as the publication could, for various reasons, not be 
long deferred. We discovered that there is no end of 
panegyric, and our research has established the con- 
viction that no other man who has ever lived, has re- 
ceived so much and so general and so just and such 
discriminating praise. 

Part I. is a slight exhibition of what men of note 
and ability have said during the four centuries since 
Luther's birth. It is by no means exhaustive of noble 
tributes, and for further reading on this point we refer 
the curious and studious to the many " Lives " of the 
Reformer and the multitude of Church Histories ex- 
tant, to files of the current periodicals covering the 
months of October, November and December, 1883, 
and to such volumes as the " Gloria Lutheri," Leipzig, 
1618; " Hundret Stimmen Namhafter Manner iiber 
Luther's Werk and Person," M. C. Bartel, St. Louis, 
Mo., 1872. Any large library will contain many 
Luther books. The Mercantile of Philadelphia, has 
over three hundred volumes treating on Luther. We 
have made use of it in the compilation of this Part, 
and received much assistance from Dr. Krauth's " Con- 
servative Reformation," Dr. Seiss' "Ecclesia Luther- 
ana," Dr. Rein's "Life of Luther," (as published in 
English by Funk & Wagnalls, New York,) Wacker- 



PREFACE. y 

nagel's " Life of Luther," (Pilger Book Store, Reading, 
Pa.); "Gloria Lutheri," by M. Caspar Roth; Stork's 
" Luther and the Bible," etc. The tributes in this part 
are arranged, as near as possible, in chronological 
order of their authors. 

Part 11. contains a few of the many editorials with 
which periodicals were teeming these past memorial 
months. We have confined ourself almost exclusively 
to religious papers in our selection, appending but a 
few from the secular press. It will be seen that non- 
Lutheran organs have even surpassed in glowing 
tribute those of the Lutheran Church. This accounts 
for so slim a representation of the best Lutheran Jour- 
nals of our land. 

Part III. is a fair showing of what prominent Amer- 
ican divines and other eminent men have said in 
various parts of our land. With but a single exception 
(that of Rev. C. H. Spurgeon), these last two parts 
are entirely composed of American tributes. The 
foreign press dispatch showed what laurel-wreaths 
could be constructed from the flowers that bloomed 
this year in Germany, which in the product of Luther- 
honor was closely followed by all other civilized and 
Protestant nations. Germany, however, took the lead, 
where Luther's battle had been fought, and where his 
glorious Battle-hymn this year " made the rafters roar 
from Hamburg to Bohemia." 

We regret that we were obliged to abbreviate some 
of the beautiful encomiums sent in, and to omit others 
altogether, since not bearing exactly on the point for 
which we had solicited. We regret also having been 
compelled to break these tributes away from their 



VI 



PREFACE. 



connection, in which they fitted Hke jewels in settings 
of gold. But we have, in most instances, indicated 
the source from which they were taken ; there the 
reader can find these gems in all their casements of 
connected thought. 

Our thanks are due to many of our ministerial 
brethren for their encouraging words, etc., in response 
to our circular. Special mention we owe Drs. Mc- 
Cosh, C. W. Schaeffer, B. M. Schmucker, J. G. Morris, 
V. L. Conrad, H. E. Jacobs, Revs. M. Sheeleigh, W. 
H. Kuntz, G. C. Henry, J. A. Singmaster, A. Stump, 
J. C. Zimmerman, J. N. Lenker, and Mr. Samuel J. 
Shanbacher, of Philadelphia, in acknowledgement of 
assistance received at their hands, either in the loan 
of a book or paper, or in their direction to such 
material as we were in search for. 

For the make-up of this laurel-wreath we claim for 
ourself no more than the finding of the hoop upon 
which the flowers are strung, the gathering of these 
laurels, and the cord that binds them together. It has 
proven to be no light task, but it has been a labor of 
much love, and if it will help to keep alive not only the 
demonstrations of this "Luther-year," but also to 
perpetuate the humble faith and the implicit trust in 
God, the brave heroism and the unflinching defence 
of right and truth, which has made this " Father of 
Protestantism," so justly famous and so widely hon- 
ored, our work shall not have been in vain. 

Schuylkill Haven, Pa. P. C. C. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

What Scholars of This and Other Days Have Said of 
Luther . 9 

What the Press Has Editorially Said of Luther This 

Memorial Year 137 

What Eminent Divines and Other Speakers Have Said 
OF Luther During the Recent Quarto-Centennial 
Festivities 195 

Index 315 

(7) 



LUTHER. 

BY JOAQUIN MILLER. 

Valiant, defiant and free. 

Majestic, impressive and lone, 

He looms like an isle of the sea 
That rose to an emperor's throne. 



(viii) 



PART I. 

WHAT SCHOLARS OF THIS AND OTHER DAYS 
HAVE SAID OF LUTHER. 



f> 



LUTHER'S HAMMER. 

Challenging the license 
To make gain of sin, 

Luther nails his protest ; 
Listen to the din ! 

Striking with his hammer; 

How the panels shake ! 
How the gateway trembles ! 

How the timid quake ! 

Blow on blow resounding, 

Echoed from afar ; 
How the world is shaken ; 

How the Churches jar I 

And throughout the ages 
Fraud has felt the force 

Of the Reformation, 
As it holds its course. 

We to-day are feeling 

Heart and conscience thrill. 
And throughout the ages 

Men will feel it still, 

Till the death-stroke's given 
To all force and fraud; 

For the striking hammer 
Is the word of God. 



(X) 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES 



A contemporary of Luther, a profound scholar, an able critic of re- 
fined taste, and a vigorous promoter of the Reformation is quoted by 
Jorton in his " Life of Erasmus," London, 1728, among many others, 
as author of the following estimates of the German Reformer: 

" As to Luther, he is altogether unknown to me, and 
I have read nothing of his except two or three pages. 
His Hfe and conversation are universally commended ; 
and it is no small prejudice in his favor, that his morals 
are unblamable, and that calumny itself can fasten no 
reproach on him." — Writing to Cardinal Wolsey in 
I 5 18. 

''All the world is agreed amongst us in commending 
his moral character. He hath given us good advice on 
some points; and God grant that his success may be 
equal to the liberty which he hath taken." —-Luther 
hath committed two unpardonable crimes : he hath 
touched the pope upon the crown, and the monks 
upon the belly. "-^/;^ a Letter to Melanchthon in 151^. 

" By the little of Luther's writings which I have 
rather run over than examined, I thought that I could 
discern in him natural talents, and a genius very proper 
to explain the holy scriptures according to the manner 
of the fathers, and to kindle those sparks of Evangelical 
doctrine, from which common custom, and the doc- 
trines of the schools upon speculations more subtile 



12 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

than useful, had departed too far. I heard men of 
great merit, equally respectable for learning and piety, 
congratulate themselves for having been acquainted 
with these books. I saw that the more unblamable 
their behaviour was, and the more approaching to 
Evangelical purity, the less they were irritated against 
him.^.His moral character was recommended even by 
some who could not endure his doctrine. As to the 
spirit with which he was animated, and of which God 
alone can judge with certainty, I chose rather, as it 
became me, to think too favorably than too hardly of 
it. And, to say the plain truth, the Christian world 
hath been long weary of those teachers who insist 
too rigidly upon trifling inventions and human con- 
stitutions, and begins to thirst after the pure and living 
water drawn from the sources of the Evangelists and 
Apostles. For this undertaking Luther seemed to be 
fitted by nature, and inflamed with an active zeal to 
prosecute it. Thus it is that I have favored Luther ; 
I have favored the good which I saw, or imagined that 
I saw in him." — Li a Letter to Campegius {1^20). 

In reply to the pope's agents attempting to win Eras- 
mus inpre and more aivay from favoring Lnther, he 
said: ' ** Luther is a man of too great abilities for me 
to encounter ; and I learn more from one page of his 
than from all the works of Thomas Aquinas." 

PHILIP MELANCHTHON, 

"The Hamlet of the Reformation," Luther's most prominent col- 
league, said during Luther's life : 

" Luther is too great, too wonderful for me to depict 
in words. If there be a man on earth I love with my 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 13 

whole heart, that man is Luther. One is an interpre- 
ter, one a logician, another an orator, affluent and 
beautiful in speech, but Luther is all in all ; whatever 
he writes, whatever he utters, pierces to the soul, fixes 
itself like arrows in the heart — he is a miracle among 
men." 

Again, in his funeral oration at Luther's grave, he 
said : 

" It is also evident that the light of the gospel has 
been kindled anew through the words and writings of 
Luther. ' He must, therefore, be counted among that 
number of illustrious men whom God has sent to 
re-establish and build up his Church upon the earth, 
and whom we recognize as the brightest ornaments 
of the human race. We acknowledge that Solon, 
Themistocles, Scipio, Augustus, and the like, who 
either founded or ruled governments, were distin- 
guished men ; but far inferior are they to leaders like 
Isaiah, John the Baptist, St. Paul, Augustine and 
Luther. It is right that we distinguish between 
merely earthly leaders, and those through whom God 
preserves and governs his Church. 

" But what did Luther do that entitles him to our 
admiration and praise ? Many say that the Church 
is in a tumult, and that incurable controversies have 
sprung up on every side. To this I would reply that 
such is simply the natural course of the Church on 
earth. When the Holy Spirit reproves the world, 
dissensions arise on account of the contumacy of the 
ungodly ; but the guilt rests with those who will not 
hear the Son of God, concerning whom the heavenly 
Father says, ' Hear ye him.' Luther brought to light 



14 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



again the true doctrines of God ; for it is evident that 
the doctrine of repentance, for example, had been in- 
volved in the grossest darkness. By dispersing this 
darkness he shows what true repentance means ; he 
points out our sure haven of refuge, and the firm con- 
solation possible for a heart that has been oppressed 
by fear of God's wrath/" He illustrated Paul's doc- 
trine of * Justification by Faith,' he marked the dis- 
tinction between the law and the gospel, between the 
righteousness of the spirit and mere external morality 
of conduct. . He indicated the true way of worshiping 
God, and awakened the Church from the heathenish 
folly of supposing that God may be rightly worshiped 
when the heart is filled with doubt and unbelief, al- 
though in such a case the natural heart shuns com- 
munion with God. He bade us pray in faith and with 
a good conscience, and led us, indeed, not to images 
and dead men, to whom the ungodly in their dark 
infatuation pray, but to the one Mediator, the Son of 
God, who sits at the right hand of the eternal Father 
and intercedes for us. Other duties and good works 
pleasing to God he also taught us, and he adorned 
and defended private civil life to a greater degree than 
has been done by the writings of any other man. And 
finally he distinguished proper and necessary works 
from the childish exercise of human ceremonies, rites 
and precepts, that hinder the true worship of God. 
And that the pure doctrines of heaven might be pre- 
served to the Church, and handed down to succeeding 
generations, he translated the Scriptures into German, 
and that, too, in a style of such clearness that this ver- 
sion affords more light to the reader than very many 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 15 

of the commentaries. In addition to this he was the 
author of many expositions of the Scriptures, which 
even Erasmus used to say far surpassed any extant. 
As it is written of those who rebuilt the city of Jeru- 
salem, that they built the walls with one hand and 
held the sword with the other, so Luther was at one 
and the same time warring with the enemies of true 
doctrine, writing expositions of God's holy word, and 
comforting the consciences of many by his godly 
counsels. Many of the truths of the Gospel, as for 
example the doctrine concerning the remission of sins 
and faith, seem to be beyond ordinary human compre- 
hension ; but(we must acknowledge that Luther was 
specially taught of God, and many of us have seen 
through what a terrible struggle he passed in learning 
the lesson that man is heard and accepted by God 
only through faith. And so throughout eternity de- 
vout hearts will celebrate the blessings which God has 
conferred upon the Church through Luther. They 
will first give thanks to God, then they will also 
acknowledge that they owe much to Luther's labors ; 
although the ungodly, who ridicule the whole Church, 
consider his virtues as merely senseless play or blind 
infatuation. ******* 

" But if I had purposed praising the rest of his life, 
which to his sixty-third year he spent in the most 
severe and earnest exercise of godliness and good 
works, and the diligent study of the arts, what a grand 
and glowing eulogy could I not pronounce upon him ! 
No base passions or revolutionary designs were ever 
observed in him ; on the contrary, he was at all times 
the counselor of peaceable measures. Outside matters 



l6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

he never mingled with the affairs of the Church, to 
increase his own power or that of his friends. I regard 
his wisdom and virtue so extraordinary that it seems 
to me scarcely possible that they were the product 
merely of human effort. Characters especially earn- 
est, ardent and lofty, such as Luther's was, must be 
held in check by divine grace. 

" What shall I say of his other virtues ? Often 
have I come in upon him when he was praying for 
the whole Church with streaming eyes. He used to 
devote some portion of almost every day to repeating 
some of the Psalms, and with groans and tears he 
mingled with them his own prayers. He frequently 
said that he felt indignant at those who either from 
laziness, or on account of their numerous occupations, 
asserted that it was sufficient to pray to God merely 
by a sigh. For that very reason, he says, forms of 
prayer have been prescribed by divine counsel, that 
indeed the voice also may confess the name of the 
God we worship. Likewise, after many grave discus- 
sions concerning public dangers had arisen, we ob- 
served that he possessed the strength of a great mind, 
and was in no way fearful of the future. No terrors 
could subdue his spirit, for he relied upon a heavenly 
anchor — that is, the word of God — and he did not 
suffer his faith to be shaken. His mind, moreover, 
was of so keen an order that he alone of us could 
determine, especially in dark and complicated circum- 
stances, what ought to be done. He did not, as many 
think, neglect to consider the affairs of the State, nor 
was he regardless of the desires of others. On the 
contrary, he was intimately acquainted with the condi- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



17 



tion of the State, and regarded most clearly the senti- 
ments and desires of all with whom he lived. * * * " 
— Translated from the Latin by Rev. C. W, Heisler, 
and published in The Workman^ Feb. 16 ^ 1882. 

JOHN BRENZ, 

The Swabian Reformer. 

" Luther alone lives in his writings ; we all are in 
comparison with him a dead letter." 

NICHOLAS VON AMSDORF. 

"If all commentaries, ancient and modern, are 
collected into one mass, and that which is best be 
selected from them, it could not be compared with the 
writings of this man. I am not ignorant how boast- 
ful this must seem, and to how many such a tribute 
must be offensive. But however others judge this 
constant assertion, I so affirm, that, since the Apostles, 
no one ever has seen or ever will be furnished with 
such wisdom, faith and constancy, as we have seen in 
Dr. Luther, not without great admiration of God's 
gifts ; nor have I any doubt that godly posterity will 
have the same judgment." — Preface to Luther's Works. 

MARTIN BUCER, 

The Reformed Theologian. 

" I. No one since the time of the Apostles has ever 
taught more clearly and faithfully the article of justifi- 
cation. 2. No one has ever opposed the Roman Anti- 
christ and his members, even to the last breath, more 
courageously, and more clearly exposed its fraud to the 



1 8 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

world. 3. None of the fathers has taught with such 
devotion and according to the mind of the Spirit con- 
cerning hving good works, viz : those that flow from 
living faith and advance the welfare of one's neighbor. 
4. No one has explained Holy Scripture so purely or 
more happily, with such energy, and so many penetrat- 
ing arguments, especially when he professedly under- 
took to explain any passage. 5. Add his translation of 
the Holy Scriptures, faithful, terse, and adorned with 
no small eloquence. 6. So far no one has taught so 
clearly what are the duties of the civil magistrate in 
regard to both tables of the law. 7. The incredible 
success of the greatest works in the Church, an ex- 
ample of which is the Augsburg Confession, in which 
he aided. 8 . The gift of prophecy, so that everything 
has happened as he has said. 9. He was the author 
of efficacious prayers, psalms, hymns, chants. As he 
prayed, so also has he well equipped the church with 
devout songs and hymns." — Gerhard's Loci Theologici, 
xii., 132. 

JOHN CALVIN. 

" We sincerely testify that we regard him as a noble 
apostle of Christ, by whose labor and ministry the 
purity of the Gospel has been restored in our times. 
If any one will carefully consider what was the state 
of things at the period when Luther arose, he will see 
that he had to contend with almost all the difficulties 
which were encountered by the apostles. In one re- 
spect, indeed, his condition was worse and harder than 
theirs. There was no kingdom, no principality, against 
which they had to declare war ; whereas Luther could 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES, 



19 



not go forth except by the ruin of that empire which 
was not only the most powerful of all, but regarded all 
the rest as obnoxious to itself" 

^^gain : " Luther is the trumpet, or rather he is the 
thunder — he is the lightning which has aroused the 
world from its lethargy — it is not so much Luther who 
speaks, as God whose lightnings burst from his lips." 
Again, writing to BuUinger, of Zurich, he says : (' ) 
"I beg that you may consider how great a man 
Luther is : with what gifts he has been endowed ; with 
what power, with what steadfastness, with what address, 
with what learning, he has been fighting against the 
kingdom of Antichrist, and for the propagation of the 
true doctrine of our salvation. I have often said, 
should he call me a devil, I would yet show him be- 
coming honor, and recognize him as an extraordinary 
servant of God." 

ULRICH ZWINGLI, 

The great Swiss Reformer, and Luther's contemporary, and follower 
in many respects. 

" Luther is, it seems to me, such an excellent cham- 
pion of God, who has examined the scriptures with so 
great a zeal that he had no equal on earth for thou- 
sands of years, (I care not that the Papists call me a 
heretic also like him,) and in the manly, undaunted 
spirit with which he attacked the Pope at Rome, no 
one has ever been his equal, without under-estimating 
any one, ever since popedom has been established. 
But to whom may we ascribe such a deed? To God, 
or to Luther? Ask Luther himself, and I am sure 
he will answer, to God. Why then do you attribute 



20 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

other men's doctrine to Luther, when he himself at- 
tributes it to God, and submits nothing new but what 
is contained in the eternally unalterable Word of God ? 
This he teaches freely, and points poor, misled Chris- 
tians to this heavenly treasure; and he does not care 
what the enemies of God may plan to oppose, nor 
does he care for their rebuke and threats. Yet I do 
not want to be called a Lutheran, since I have read too 
little of his teachings. Nevertheless, what of his 
writings I have read I find to be so well substantiated 
and grounded upon the Word of God, that it is im- 
possible for any man to pervert it. * * * * * 

"Does Luther preach Christ? So do I; although, 
blessed be God, there are unspeakably more souls led 
to God through him than through me and others 
(whom God endows with superior or inferior talents, 
according to his purpose). * * * Hence I hope 
it will be understood why I do not wish to be called 
a Lutheran, however highly I esteem Luther. * * 
Nevertheless, I am not to be compared with him, (in 
endowment, etc."). 

MARTIN CHEMNITZ, 

The great Lutheran theologian. 

"A man may tell how far he has advanced in the- 
ology, by the degree to which he is pleased with| 
Luther's writings." 

JOHN GERHARD, 

The distinguished Lutheran theologian. 

" Our confession does not depend upon Luther's 
doctrine or person, but on the unshaken word of 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



21 



God. We do not ascribe to Luther prophetic or 
apostolic authority, or absolute infallibility; nor do 
we make his writings equal to the prophetic and apos- 
tolic scriptures; neither without proof from God's 
word do we believe him asserting anything; but we 
regard him an eminent teacher of the Church, whom 
God in these last times has raised up for the profit of 
his Church oppressed by the papal yoke, and endowed 
with unique gifts, and furnished with excellent strength 
of soul, to remove corruptions and abuses from the 
pure preaching of the Gospel, and to bring back to 
light the truth, almost covered by the darkness of 
errors." — Confessio Catholic a. 

JEAN CLAUDE. 

"We discover a great many excellent things in him; 
an heroical courage, a great love for the truth, an 
ardent zeal for the glory of God, a great trust in His 
providence, extraordinary learning in a dark age, a 
profound respect for the Holy Scripture, an indefati- 
gable spirit, and a great many other high qualities." — 
''Defence of the Reformation^' English translation, 
London, 1815, vol. i, p. 289. 

JACQUES B. BOSSUET, 

A distinguished Roman Catholic theologian and pulpit orator of France. 

" In the time of Luther, the most violent rupture and 
greatest apostasy occurred which had perhaps ever 
been seen in Christendom. The two parties who have 
called themselves Reformed have alike recognized him 
as the author of this new Reformation. It is not alone 



22 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

his followers, the Lutherans, who have lavished upon 
him the highest praises. Calvin frequently admires his 
virtues, his magnanimity, his constancy, the incom- 
parable industry which he displayed against the pope. 
* He is the trumpet, or rather he is the thunder — he is 
the lightning which has roused the world from its 
lethargy; it was not so much Luther that spoke, as 
God whose lightnings burst from his lips.' And it is 
true that he had a strength of genius, a vehemence in 
his discourses, a living and impetuous eloquence, which 
entranced and ravished the people." — '' Histoire des 
Variationesy 

JOHN BUNYAN, 

The "Dreamer of Bedford," whose "Pilgrim's Progress" has 
guided millions of Christians on their way to heaven, speaks thus of 
Luther's commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians : 

" I did greatly long to see some ancient godly man's 
experience, who had writ some hundreds of years be- 
fore I was born ; for those who had writ in our days I 
thought (but I desire them now to pardon me), that 
they had writ only that which others felt ; or else had, 
through the strength of their wits and parts, studied 
to answer such objections as they perceived others 
were perplexed with, without going down themselves 
into the deep. Well, after many such longings in my 
mind, the God in whose hands are all our days and 
ways did cast into my hand one day a book of Martin 
Luther's; it was his comment on Galatians; it was so 
old that it was ready to fall from piece to piece, if I 
did but turn it over. Now I was pleased much that 
such an old book had fallen into my hands, the which, 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 23 

when I had but a Httle way perused, I found my con- 
dition in his experience so largely and profoundly 
handled, as if his book had been written out of my 
heart. This made me marvel; for thus thought I, 
this man could not know anything of the state of 
Christians now, but must needs write and speak the 
experience of former days. Besides, he doth most 
gravely also in that book debate of the rise of these 
temptations, namely: blasphemy, desperation and the 
like ; showing that the law of Moses, as well as the 
devil, death and hell, hath a very great hand therein ; 
the which at first was very strange to me, but, consid- 
ering and watching, I found it so, indeed. But of 
particulars, here, I intend nothing; only this methinks 
I must let fall before all men, I do prefer this book of 
Martin Luther upon the Galatians (except the Holy 
Bible), before all the books that ever I have seen, as 
most fit for a wounded conscience." 

PHILIP JACOB SPENER, 

Founder and father of the Pietists. 

"In the days of our fathers, God was pleased 
again to have pity on His Church, and to give it a 
new token of His favor, in the blessed work of the 
Reformation. At that time then did he send forth 
preachers of the Gospel, in goodly numbers, and en- 
dowed with precious gifts, amongst whom was one, a 
star of the first magnitude, who surpassed all the rest, 
that venerable man of God, Dr. Martin Luther. Gladly 
do we embrace the opportunities that are often given 
to us to speak of him ; and by so doing, to record our 



24 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER, 

gratitude to God for the blessings conferred upon the 
Church, through his ministry. * * * * \Ye can 
say with perfect truth that seven genuine gifts of the 
Holy Ghost were imparted to this man in full measure : 
erudition, eloquence, diligence, fervent love for God 
and man, an exemplary life above reproach, faith of 
extraordinary strength, and patience that was always 
rej oicing." — Luthenis Redivivus. 

AUGUSTUS HERMAN FRANKE, 

The eminent Professor of Halle, and associate with Spener in the 
Pietistic movement. 

" My estimate of the man. Dr. Martin Luther, is that 
God had not only adorned him with great natural 
talents, but gifted him also in an extraordinary manner 
with a true and fundamental theology of His grace, 
and so richly endowed him with the gifts of the Holy 
Spirit that he could fill his station as Professor with 
great influence as well as prove an uncommon and 
glorious example to his and future times, in his heroic 
faith and unflinching fidelity and integrity towards 
God and his fellow-men. ***** 

" Concerning his Reformation, I hold that God truly 
raised and led him to the great work of bringing back 
to light again the pure, evangelical doctrine which had 
become so beclouded under the papacy; and that no 
one could have come from God who professed a re- 
formation of the Church contrary to that of Luther. 
For the pillar of this reformation consisted in the fact 
that all human work, teaching and tradition was abol- 
ished and annulled, and that instead all honor must 
be given to God the Lord, who has made Christ Jesus 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 25 

to be unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sancti- 
fication, and redemption. Hence, since I thus hon- 
estly regard Luther's doctrine to have been the true, 
evangehcal, pure and Apostohc doctrine, founded upon 
the Word of God, and builded upon such a foundation 
on which alone we can come to God and be saved, 
and since Luther was saved in this doctrine, I am per- 
suaded as for myself, also to live and die in this faith. 
***** In like manner do I ad- 

mire the great and noble gifts, with which God freely 
endowed Luther, enabling him thereby, just as in ex- 
position and interpretation of Scripture, so more es- 
pecially also to translate the Holy Scriptures, to 
express the intent of the original in elegant, clear, in- 
telligible, and at the same time, euphonious and im- 
pressive German. * * * " — Monthly Biblical 
Notes, 1695. 

PIERRE BAYLE, 

The "prince of skeptics" and logicians, in his "Historical and 
Critical Dictionary," London, 1 736, vol. 3, pp. 934-937, has a long 
article in defence of Luther's character against slanders — of which the 
following is a brief extract : 

" His greatest enemies cannot deny but that he 
had eminent qualities, and history affords nothing more 
surprising than what he has done : for a simple monk 
to be able to give popery so rude a shock, that there 
needed but such another entirely to overthrow the 
Romish Church, is what we cannot sufficiently ad- 
mire." 
2 



26 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

FRANCIS ATTERBURY, 

The learned Bishop of Rochester, England, living in the 17th centuiy. 

" Martin Luther's life was a continued warfare. He 
was engaged against the united forces of the papal 
world, and he stood the shock of them bravely, both 
with courage and success. He was a man certainly 
of high endowments of mind, and great virtues. He 
had a vast understanding, which raised him to a pitch 
of learning unknown to the age in which he lived. 
His knowledge in scripture was admirable, his elocu- 
tion manly, and his way of reasoning, with all the 
subtility that the plain truths he delivered would bear. 
His thoughts were bent always on great designs, and 
he had a resolution to go through with them, and the 
assurance of his mind was not to be shaken, or sur- 
prised. His life was holy, and, when he had leisure 
for retirement, severe. His virtues were active chiefly, 
and social, and not those lazy, sullen ones of the 
cloister. He had no ambition but in the service of 
God ; for other things, neither his enjoyments nor 
wishes ever went higher than the bare conveniences 
of living. If, among this crowd of virtues, a failing 
crept in, we must remember that an apostle himself 
had not been irreproachable ; if in the body of his 
doctrine a flaw is to be seen, yet the greatest lights of 
the Church, and in the purest times of it, were, we 
know, not exact in all their opinions. Upon the 
whole, we have certainly great reason to break out in 
the language of the prophet, and say, ' How beautiful 
on the mountains are the feet of him who bringeth 
glad tidings.' " — " Vindication of Luther T 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



27 



JOHANN FRANZ BUDDEUS. 

" Here, beyond doubt, the highest praise is due to 
our sainted Luther, who first, when all was lost, all in 
despair, lifted up the standard of better hopes. Nor 
could one better fitted for sustaining the truth have 
been found. Acuteness of judgment and fertility of 
thought were both his ; these gave to him arguments 
of might, overwhelming eloquence which swept every- 
thing before it like a torrent. His was an intrepid 
soul, w^hich neither power, danger nor threats could 
turn from the right. The truth indeed fought for him, 
but no less did he fight for the truth, so that no mortal 
could have done more to defend it, and place it be- 
yond the reach of its foes. You are forced every- 
where to confess the accurate disputer, the exquisite 
theologian, the earnest defender of the truth. His 
own writings leave no room for doubt that he argued 
from profound conviction of the truth, and that he 
was wholly free from the crime of men, who employ 
a line of defence, not because they regard it as true, 
but because it suits their purpose. The abundance of 
arguments well adapted to their purpose, the copious- 
ness and power of language, alike arrest the attention. 
He so demonstrates the truth as to leave the errorist 
no subterfuge ; such is the firmness of his grasp, that 
he seizes the assent of the reader, hurries him, forces 
him to his conclusion. He asks no favors, makes no 
effort to propitiate ; he compels by the weight of 
proof, triumphs by demonstration of the truth, and 
forces the unwilling to do homage to sound doctrine." 
— '' B. Isagoge Hist-Theologicall' Leipzig, 1730, pp. 
103 1, 1040. 



28 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

JOHANN ALBRECHT BENGEL, 

The distinguished theologian and able Swabian commentator. 

" Luther was truly a great man. All his colleagues 
together could not have made a Luther. They 
had all to stand in wholesome respect of him; and 
he knew well how to use each of them in the very 
way in which he could be the most useful. If any of 
them ever conceived any other or different notions, he 
prudently kept them quiet until Luther was dead. The 
death of Luther is an important boundary line in his- 
tory. After the death of Luther, there was nothing 
new added to the work of the Reformation." 

JOHN WESLEY, 

The illustrious founder of the Methodist Church, gives the following 
account of his entrance into light : 

" In the evening, I went very unwillingly, to a society 
in Aldersgate, where one was reading Luther's preface 
to the Epistle to the R.omans. About a quarter before 
nine, while he was describing the change which God 
works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my 
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, 
Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given 
me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and 
saved me from the law of sin and death." 

JOHANN CHRISTOPH DCEDERLEIN. 

"Amidst all that Luther has written, I know nothing 
more precious than his sermons and his letters. From 
both of these we can at least learn to know the man in 
his entire greatness, and in accordance with his genu- 
ine character, which superstition and malice, and the 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



29 



partisan licentiousness both of friends and foes, has dis- 
figured ; from both beams forth the most open honesty, 
the firmness of a courage which never quailed, fear- 
lessness of judgment, and that spirit which knew so 
perfectly its aim, which preserved its serenity amid all 
calamities and changes allotted by Providence, and 
knew how to use to good purpose, sport and earnest. 
His letters especially bear the impress of the most 
artless simplicity, and of the most naive vivacity and 
. . . are entertaining, rich in instruction, and worthy of 
descending to posterity, were there no other purpose, 
to show that immortal man speaking, especially with 
his friends." — '' Aiiserlesen Theol. Bibliothckl' Leipzig, 
1780, Band I., p. 631. 

GOTTHOLD E. LESSING. 

The great German literateur and critic, utters his admiration of 
Luther in the following striking manner: 

"In such reverence do I hold Luther, that I rejoice 
in having been able to find some defects in him, for I 
have been in imminent danger of making him an ob- 
ject of idolatrous veneration. The proofs that in some 
things he was like other men are to me as precious as 
the most dazzling of his virtues " 

FREDERICK THE GREAT. 

" Had Luther done nothing else but liberate the 
princes and the people from the servile bondage un- 
der which the dominion of the Roman papacy held 
them, he would deserve to have monuments erected to 
his honor as the Liberator of his country." — Fleurfs 
Church Histoiy. 



30 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ERNEST KARL WIELAND. 

" So great was Luther, in whatever aspect we view 
him, so worthy of admiration, so deserving of uni- 
versal gratitude, ahke great as a man, a citizen, and a 
scholar." — {jOharacteristics of Luther — last paragraph.) 

JOHANN G. HERDER, 

An illustrious German thinker and writer of the i8th century. 

" Luther was a patriotic, great man. As teacher of 
the German nation, as co-reformer, indeed, of the 
whole of enlightened Europe, he has long been recog- 
nized; even people who do not accept his articles of 
religion, enjoy the fruits of his reformation. He, like 
a Hercules, grappled with the spiritual despotism 
which annuls or undermines all free, healthy thinking, 
and restored to whole peoples the use of reason, and 
this, indeed, in the most difficult of all things, in 
spiritual. The might of his language and of his up- 
right spirit united itself with sciences, which burst 
into new life from him and with him, allied itself with 
the labors of the best men in all departments, who 
thought, in part, it may be, very differently from him ; 
and so arose for the first time a popular literary public 
in Germany and in the neighboring countries. Now, 
those read, who had otherwise never read, while 
those learned to read who were otherwise unable to 
read. Schools and academies were founded, German 
religious songs were sung, and sermons preached in 
the German' language. Let us for our times apply 
and turn to account his manner of thought and his 
manifest suggestions, and the truths he so strongly 
and yet so naively uttered." 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



31 



Again, speaking of Luther as a preacher, he says : 
" He spoke the simple, strong, unadorned language 
of the understanding ; he spoke from the heart, not 
from the head and from memory. His sermons, 
therefore, have been the models, especially of those 
preachers in our Church who are of stable minds." 

WILLIAM COXE, 

A noted historical writer. 

" Luther possessed a temper and acquirements which 
peculiarly fitted him for the character of a reformer. 
Without the fastidious nicety of refined taste and 
elegance, he was endowed with singular acuteness and 
logical dexterity, possessed profound and varied erudi- 
tion; and his rude, though fervid eloquence, inter- 
mixed with the coarsest wit and keenest raillery, was 
of that species which is best adapted to affect and 
influence a popular assembly. His Latin, though it 
did not rise to the purity of Erasmus and his other 
learned contemporaries, was yet copious, free, and 
forcible, and he was perfectly master of his native 
tongue, and wrote it with such purity, that his works 
are still esteemed as models of style by the German 
critics. He was animated with an undaunted spirit, 
which raised him above all apprehension of danger, 
and possessed a perseverance which nothing could 
fatigue. He was at once haughty and condescend- 
ing, jovial, affable and candid in public; studious, 
sober and self-denying in private; and he was endowed 
with that happy and intuitive sagacity which enabled 
him to suit his conduct and manners to the exigency 
of the moment, to lessen or avert danger by timely 



32 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



flexibility, or to bear down all obstacles by firmness 
and impetuosity. His merciless invectives and con- 
temptuous irony, were proper weapons to repel the 
virulence and scurrility of his adversaries; and even the 
fire and arrogance of his temper, though blemishes in 
a refined age, were far from being detrimental in a 
controversy which roused all the passions of the 
human breast, and required the strongest exertions of 
fortitude and courage. Such were the principles and 
conduct of this extraordinary man, when the enormous 
abuses arising from the sale of indulgences attracted 
his notice, and involved him in that memorable contro- 
versy with the Church of Rome, for which he seems 
to have been trained and adapted by his temper, 
studies, occupation, and habits of life." — ''History of 
the House of Austria^' London, Bohn, 1847, vol i, 
p. 383. 

COUNT VON STOLBERG, 
A Roman Catholic. 

"Against Luther's person I would not cast a stone. 
In him I honor, not alone one of the grandest spirits 
that ever lived, but a great religiousness also, which 
never forsook him." 

AARON BANCROFT. 

" Martin Luther, a man of the most powerful m'n.l 
and intrepid character, who persisted resolutely in his 
defence of Christian liberty and Christian truth ; and 
by the blessing of God he triumphed over all oppo- 
sition. His name is identified in every country with 
the reformed religion, and will be venerated and as- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



33 



teemed in every subsequent age, by all who prize re- 
ligious freedom, and set a value on religious privileges." 
— '' Sennons on Doctrines^' Worcester, 1822, No. xi. 

ALEXANDER BOWER. 

" In the personal character of Luther, we discern 
many qualities calculated to enable him to discharge 
with success the important duty to which he was called. 
A constitutional ardor for devotion, a boundless thirst 
of knowledge, and a fearless zeal in communicating it, 
were prominent characteristics of this extraordinary 
man. An unwearied perseverance in theological re- 
search led him to detect errors, and to relinquish, step 
by step, many of his early opinions. In all situations 
Luther is the same, pursuing indefatigably the knowl- 
edge of the Word of God, and never scrupling to 
avow his past mistakes, whenever the confession could 
facilitate the inquiries or confirm the faith of others. 
It was in vain that the head of the Church and the 
chief of the German Empire combined to threaten and 
proscribe him — he braved with equal courage the very 
lance of either power, and continued to denounce, 
with an unsparing hand, the prevalence of corruption. 
In no single instance did he seek to turn to his per- 
sonal advantage his distinctions and the influence 
attached to them. How few individuals would have 
possessed Luther's power without making it subser- 
vient to the acquisition of rank or honors ? All these 
were disdained by him, and his mind remained wholly 
occupied with the diffusion of religious truth. Even 
literary fame had no attractions for him. The im- 
provement of the condition of his fellow-creatures was 
2* 



34 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



the object which with him superseded every other 
consideration. No temptation of ambition could re- 
move him, in his days of celebrity, from his favorite 
University of Wittenberg. While his doctrine spread 
far and wide, and wealthy cities would have been 
proud to receive him, Luther clung to the spot where 
he discharged the duty of a teacher, and to the associ- 
ates whom he had known in the season of humility. 
The freedom of his language in treating of the conduct 
of the great, arose partly from his constitutional ardor, 
and partly from an habitual impression of the all- 
powerful claims of truth. The lofty attitude so often 
assumed by him is not therefore to be attributed to 
pride or vanity. In treating of the Scriptures, he con- 
sidered himself as acting in the presence of God, whose 
majesty and glory were so infinitely exalted above all 
created beings, as to reduce to one and the same level 
the artificial distinctions of worldly institutions. * * 
An independent and manly tone in regard not only to 
religion, but to civil liberty, literature, the arts and 
sciences, was created and disseminated by his example. 
Few writers discover greater knowledge of the world, 
or a happier talent in analyzing and illustrating the 
shades of character. It is equally remarkable that no 
man could display more forcibly the tranquil conso- 
lations of religion. Few men entered with more ardor 
into the innocent pleasures of society. His frankness 
of disposition was apparent at the first interview, and 
his communicative turn, joined to the richness of his 
stores, rendered his conversation remarkably interest- 
ing. In treating of humorous subjects, he discovered 
as much vivacity and playfulness as if he had been a 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 35 

man unaccustomed to serious research." — ''Life of 
Luther;' Philadelphia, 1824. 

ERNST MAURICE ARNDT, 

One of the liberators of Germany, and author of that patriotic song, 
"What is the German's Fatherland." 

" Luther was a man of God, a German, who thought 
more of hearty sincerity than of nonsense, who attached 
a higher value to truth than to lying, who believed in 
God and worshipped Him, but fought and despised 
the devil. Shy and timid he is when first entering 
upon the course; but the further he advances, the 
stronger, the grander he grows. His body seems to 
grow; his heart, his courage, his whole bearing is im- 
proved and developed, so that they who had previously 
known him were amazed to see into what manliness 
of presence, and what stateliness of mien, the poor little 
retiring monk had grown. It was possible only for 
such a stern, fiery, unconquerable spirit as was his, 
possible only for a man in whom courage, sagacity, 
eloquence, classical and scientific culture were com- 
bined as they were in him, to lay hold of such a 
gigantic work, and to carry it through. But what 
could he have done if he had not had the faith that 
was in him? * * * By means of the most deli- 
cate and most ethereal of instruments, fervid with a 
fire that was sometimes overflowing, by the omnipotent 
word, for the exposition and diffusion of which his 
soul was clothed with strength and light, and his lips 
enriched with the power of faith and of divine assur- 
ance, Luther wrought and perfected a work which was, 
in the highest degfree, immense." 



36 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

DR. REUSS. 

" His (Luther's) Bible was, for its era, a miracle of 
science. Its style sounded as the prophecy of a golden 
age of literature, and in masculine force, and in the 
unction of the Holy Spirit, it remains a yet unap- 
proached model." — " Geschichte der Heiligen Schrift^' 
N. T., § 47. 

SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE. 

"How would Christendom have fared without a 
Luther? What would Rome have done and dared 
but for the ocean of the Reformed that rounds her? 
Luther lives yet — not so beneficially in the Lutheran 
Church as out of it — an antagonistic spirit to Rome, 
and a purifying and preserving spirit in Christendom 
at large." 

His son, Henry Nelson Coleridge^ in his introduction 
to the '' BiograpJiia Liter aria'' of his father, says in 
defence of his father's religious opinions: 

" He saw the very mind of St. Paul in the teaching 
of Luther on the Law and Justification by Faith. My 
father's affectionate respect for Luther is enough to 
alienate him from the High Anglican party." 

Again, speaking for himself, H. N. Coleridge says: 
" It is an insult to the apostolic man's (Luther's) 
memory, to defend him from the charge of Antinomi- 
anism. He knocked down with his little finger more 
Antinomianism than his accusers with both hands. 
If his doctrine is the jaw-bone of an ass, he must have 
been a very Samson, for he turned numbers with this 
instrument from the evil of their lives." 

Speaking in defence of Luther's Commentary on 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. yj 

Galatians, he says: "The commentary contains, or 
rather is, a most spirited siege of Babylon, and the 
friends of Rome hke it as well as the French like 
Wellington and the battle of Waterloo." 

" My father called Luther, in parts, the most evan- 
gelical writer he knew, after the apostles." 

FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL, 

The scholarly German historian and Romanist. 

" It is well known to you that all true philologists 
regard this as the standard and model of classical ex- 
pression in the German language; and that not only 
Klopstock, but many other writers of the first rank, 
have fashioned their style and selected their phrases 
according to the rules of this version. =^ * "^ In 
these later times, we have witnessed an attempt to 
render a new and rational translation of the Bible, an 
instrument of propagating the doctrines of the illum- 
inati ; and we have seen too much even in the hands 
of Catholics themselves. But the instant this folly 
had blown over, we returned, with increased affection, 
to the excellent old version of Luther. He, indeed, 
has not the whole merit of producing it. We owe to 
him, nevertheless, the highest gratitude for placing in 
our hands this most noble and manly model of Ger- 
man expression. Even in his own writings he displays 
a most original eloquence, surpassed by but few names 
that occur in the whole history of literature. He had, 
indeed, all those qualities which fit a man to be a 
revolutionary orator. ****** 
As to the intellectual power and greatness of Luther, 



38 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

abstracted from all consideration of the uses to which 
he applied them, I think there are {^^^n, even of his 
own disciples, who appreciate him highly enough. 
His coadjutors were mostly mere scholars, indolent 
and enlightened men of the common order. It was 
upon him and his soul that the fate of Europe de- 
pended. He was the man of his age and nation." — 
''Lectures on the History of Literature'^' New York, 
1841, p. 348-350- 

" That the Reformation did not at its very com- 
mencement become a revolution of this kind, we are 
chiefly indebted to Luther. He it was who thus gave 
permanency to the Reformation. * * * * 

His personal character in general was excellently 
adapted to consolidate and perpetuate his party. The 
great energy which gave him such a decided prepon- 
derance over all who cooperated with him, preserved 
as much unity as was at all possible in such a state of 
moral ferment. * * * * p^^ ^^g undeni- 

ably gifted with great qualities. Luther's eloquence 
made him a man of the people ; his principles, how- 
ever, despite his passionate expression of them, re- 
mained, nevertheless, in essentials, both with regard 
to political subjects and to matters of faith, within 
certain limits ; and joined to that circumstance, the 
very obstinacy which his friends complained of, con- 
solidated and united the new party and gave it a per- 
manent strength." — ''Lectures 071 Modern LListoryl' 
London, 1849, p. 169. 

" In the first place, as regards the Reformation, it is 
evident of itself, that a man who accomplished so 
L ighty a revolution in the human mind, and in his 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. ^g 

age, could have been endowed with no ordinary powers 
of intellect, and no common strength of character. 
Even his writings display an astonishing boldness and 
energy of thought and language, united with a spirit 
of impetuous, passionate and convulsive enthusiasm. 
The opinion as to the use which was made of these 
high powers of genius, must, of course, vary with the 
religious principles of each individual ; but the extent 
of these intellectual endowments themselves, and the 
strength and perseverance of character with which 
they were united, must be universally admitted. * * 

* * * It was by the conduct of Luther, and the 
influence which he thereby acquired, that the Refor- 
mation was promoted and consolidated. Without 
this, Protestantism would have sunk into the lawless an- 
archy, which marked the proceedings of the Hussites, 
and to which the war of the Peasants rapidly tended. 

* * None of the other heads and leaders of the 
new religious party had the power, or were in a situa- 
tion to uphold the Protestant religion : its present ex- 
istence is solely and entirely the work and the deed 
of one man, unique in his way, and who holds unques- 
tionably a conspicuous place in the history of the 
world. Much was staked on the soul of that man, and 
it was in every respect a mighty and critical moment 
in the annals of mankind and in the march of time." — 
" Philosophy of History ^ 

ROBERT SOUTHEY, 

L^ Poet-laureate of England. 

^/ " Blessed be the day of Martin Luther's birth ! It 
should be a festival only second to that of the nativity 
of Jesus Christ." 



40 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



,L^ • F. A. COX. 

' ^.-^ " Amongst the instruments of this remarkable 
change, the name of Martin Luther sttods pre- 
eminent. He was not, indeed, the first or the onlx 
advocate of this righteous cause, but he was, in many- 
respects, the greatest. \j)Luther possessed a vigorous 
and fearless soul. He was qualified to take the lead, 
and to head opposition in a servile age. His mind was 
incessantly active; his ardor in the pursuit of knowl- 
edge and in the propagation of what he knew, inex- 
tinguishable; and in the holy war which he undertook, 
having buckled on the armor, he was impatient for the 
conflict and assured of the victory. Never scarcely 
did the *hand of^God form a fitter instrument to do a 
greater work." — ''Life of Philip Melanchthon',' ist 
American edition, Boston, 1835. 

HENRY HALLAM, 

A philosophic English historian and critic. 

" A better tone (in preaching) began with Luther. 
His language was sometimes rude and low, but per- 
suasive, artless, powerful. He gave many useful pre- 
cepts, as well as examples, for pulpit eloquence. In 
the history of the Reformation, Luther is incomparably 
the greatest name. We see him the chief figure of a 
group of gownsmen, standing in contrast on the can- 
vas with the crowned rivals of France and Austria, 
and their attendant warriors, but blended in the unity 
of that historic picture. It is admitted on all sides 
that he wrote his own language with force, and he is 
reckoned one of its best models. The hymns in use 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. ^I 

with the Lutheran Church, many of which are his own, 
possess a simple dignity and devoutness, never before 
excelled in that class of poetry, and alike distinguished 
from the poverty of Sternhold or Brady, and from the 
meretricious ornament of later writers. * * It is not 
to be imagined that a man of his vivid parts fails to 
perceive an advantage, in that close grappling, sen- 
tence by sentence, with an adversary which fills most 
of his controversial writings ; and in scornful irony he 
had no superior." — " Introduction to the Literature of 
Europe I' vol. I. p. 197. 

HEINRICH HEINE, 

A modern German poet and wit. 

"He created the German language. He was not 
only the greatest but the most German man of our 
history. In his character all the faults and all the 
virtues of the Germans are combined on the largest 
scale. Then he had qualities which are very seldom 
found united, which we are accustomed to regard as 
irreconcilable antagonisms. He was, at the same 
time, a dreamy mystic and a practical man of action. 
His thought had not only wings, but hands. He 
spoke and he acted. He was not only the tongue, 
but the sword of his time. When he had plagued 
himself all day long with his doctrinal distinctions, in 
the evening he took his flute and gazed at the stars, 
dissolved in melody and devotion. He could be as 
soft as a tender maiden. Sometimes he was wild as 
the storm that uproots the oak, and then again he was 
gentle as the zephyr that dallies with the violet. He 
was full of the most awful reverence and self-sacrifice 



42 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



in honor of the Holy Spirit. He could merge him- 
self entire, in pure spirituality. And yet he was well 
acquainted with the glories of this world, and knew 
how to prize them. He was a complete man, I would 
say an absolute man, one in whom matter and spirit 
were not divided. To call him a spiritualist, therefore, 
would be as great an error as to call him a sensualist. 
How shall I express it ? He had something original, 
incomprehensible, miraculous, such as we find in all 
providential men — something invincible, spirit-pos- 
sessed." 

FREDERICK L. G. VON RAUMER, 

A very distinguished German historical writer, in his reply to the 
charge against Luther by Palavicini, the historian of the Council of 
Trent: 

"To this judgment of Palavicini, after a conscien- 
tious testing of all the facts, we cannot assent — but are 
constrained to acknowledge the truth to be this ; A 
fruitful genius, whose fruits could not all come to a 
mellow ripeness, because they were prematurely 
shaken down by storms. A mighty spirit, who helped 
to arouse the storms ; but, had not the building been 
undermined by fearful abuses, a purification might have 
been possible without overthrowing it. Only because 
the builders who were called to the work of reform, 
not only refused to perform it, but increased the evil, 
did he become their master; and with success grew 
his boldness or his faith in his divine vocation, and his 
wrath against his opponents. In his contest with the 
papacy he placed in the van evangelical freedom of 
faith, and this is the source of Protestantism; in the 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 43 

establishment of his Church he often was willing to 
shackle thought, lost his own clearness of perception, 
and became intolerant. But his hardest and least be- 
coming language appears mild in comparison with the 
blood-thirsty intolerance of his opponents, mild in 
comparison with the headman's ax and the stake. A 
noble eloquence supplanted the unintelligible prattle 
of the schools; through him Germany once more 
learned to speak ; the German people once more to 
hear. He who is displeased with his style, or with his 
matter, must yet confess that his writings reveal every- 
where the inspiration of the fear of God and the power 
of faith. Luther never dissimulated. Persuasions, 
promises, threats, had no power to shake his rock-firm 
will, his indomitable purpose; and the seeming self- 
will and severity connected with this arose, at least, 
from no common-place and perverted character. No 
man ever grasps the whole truth in perfect clearness; 
but few have more earnestly striven to attain it, and 
with more perfect self-renunciation confessed it, than 
Luther. Among his opponents not one can be com- 
pared with him in personal qualities; with all his 
faults, he remains greatest and most memorable among 
men; a man in whose train follows a whole world of 
aspiration, effort, and achievement." 

THOMAS CHALMERS, 

The distinguished preacher of Scotland, in a sermon on Jer. vi. 16, in 
London : 

" A sense of duty acting on an unconquered heart, 
sent him forth single-handed to encounter hosts of ob- 
durate foes ; and by the bend of his uplifted arm he 



44 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

shook the authority of the high pontificate which kept 
the earth in thraldom, and brought down the peering 
altitude of that olden tyranny whose head was raised 
to heaven and whose base was fixed in the deepest 
prejudice. His own heart nourished the germ of the 
greatest revolution the world ever saw. Many hearts 
caught his enthusiastic ardor, and his voice was echoed 
] I from the most distant corners of Europe. ' He entered 
^ the field as a champion of the rights of humanity ; his 
might overcame every difficulty, and he stood forward 
as the victorious conqueror of ignorance and impos- 
ture. Luther did more for the success of a mighty 
cause than any had before him achieved in the history 
of the world. From his deep, silent, and meditative 
spirit, an impulse was given to the mechanism of human 
society which it never till then received." 

BISHOP KIDDER. 

"As for Martin Luther, whatever the Romanists 
say of him now, yet certain it is that Erasmus, who I 
hope will pass with Cardinal Bellarmine for a Catholic, 
who lived in his time, gives a better account of him. 
In his letter to the Cardinal of York, speaking of 
Luther, he says: ' His life is approved by all men, and 
this is no slight ground of prejudice in his favor, that 
such was the integrity of his morals that his enemies 
could find nothing to reproach him with.' Again, in 
a letter to Melanchthon : ' All men among us approve 
the life of Luther.'" — '^ Bellannine's Notes',' p. 312. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 45 

C. C. J. BUNSEN, 

Formerly Prussian minister to England. 

" Luther's life is both the epos and the tragedy of 
his age. It is an epos because its first part presents a 
hero and a prophet, who conquers apparently insuper- 
able difficulties and opens a new world to the human 
mind, without any power but that of divine truth and 
deep conviction, or any authority but that inherent in 
sincerity and undaunted, unselfish courage. But 
Luther's life is also a tragedy ; it is the tragedy of 
Germany as well as of the hero, her son, who in vain 
tried to rescue his country from unholy oppressions, 
and to regenerate her from within, as a nation, by 
means of the Gospel ; and who died in unshaken faith 
in Christ and in His kingdom, although he lived to 
see his beloved fatherland going to destruction, not 
through, but in spite of the Reformation. Both parts 
of Luther's life are of the highest interest. In the epic 
part of it we see the most arduous work of the time — 
the work for two hundred years tried in vain by 
councils, and by prophets, and martyrs, with and with- 
out emperors, kings, and princes — undertaken by a 
poor monk alone, who carried it out under the ban 
both of the pope and the empire. In the second we 
see him surrounded by friends and disciples, always 
the spiritual head of his nation, and the revered ad- 
viser of princes and preacher of the people; living in 
the same poverty as before, and leaving his descend- 
ants as unprovided for as Aristides left his daughter. 
So lived and died the greatest hero of Christendom 
since the Apostles ; the restorer of that form of Christi- 



46 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

anity which now sustains Europe, and (with all its 
defects) is regenerating and purifying the whole human 
race; the founder of the modern German language and 
literature; the first speaker and debater of his country; 
and, at the same time, the first writer in prose and 
verse of his age." 

Again, speaking of Luther's translation of the Bible, 
Bunsen says [Life of Luther) : " Thousands of copies 
were read with indescribable delight by the people, 
who had now access to Him whom Luther had 
preached to them as the Author of salvation, in their 
mother-tongue, in a purity and clearness unknown 
before, and never surpassed since. By choosing the 
Franconian dialect, in use in the imperial chancery, 
Luther made himself intelligible both to those whose 
vernacular dialect, was High German or Low German. 
Luther translated faithfully but vernacularly, with a 
native grace which up to this day makes his Bible 
the standard of the German language. It is Luther's 
genius applied to the Bible which has preserved the 
only unity which is in our days remaining to the 
German nation — that of language, literature, and 
thought. There is no similar instance in the known 
history of the world of a single man achieving such a 
•work. His prophetic mind foresaw that the scrip- 
tures would pervade the living languages and tongues 
all over the earth — a process going on still with 
more activity than ever." 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



47 



GOTTFRIED THOMASIUS, 

Late Professor in the University of Erlangen. 

"The" most inner nerve of the corruption was still 
not yet reached, the great word to enkindle the flame 
was not yet spoken, the man of spiritual might, who, 
with a prophetic voice, was to sound the cry to the 
German people, had not yet arisen. In Luther God 
gave this gift to the church. In him the principle, 
one may say the spirit of Protestantism, was made in- 
carnate, and in a way so original that he has attained 
typical importance to the entire church called after 
him. Even to this day, it bears his signature." 

K. F. A. KAHNIS, 

Of the University of Leipsic. 

" If it be true that the essence of Christianity con- 
sists in the communion of the individual soul with 
God by faith in Christ, and the essence of the German 
spirit in feeling, we must acknowledge that never 
have the Christian and the German spirit so thor- 
oughly pervaded any one man as Luther. They only 
who comprehend the nature of both the Christian and 
German spirit, can understand the splendid contrasts 
found united in him. Luther was most thoroughly 
latural, yet filled with a deep knowledge of his sinful- 
ness and a conviction of his impotence. He was a 
man of the deepest earnestness, yet just when he was 
in the very crisis of his fate, he would both speak 
and write in a humorous tone. He was a man who 
bore in his heart, as none other did, the interests of 
the kingdom, and served it with a gigantic expendi- 



48 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ture of energy; yet he found time to take an interest 
in everything, in the least as well as in the greatest, 
to work at his lathe, to mend his own garments, to 
play chess, to practice music, to sing, etc. He was 
a man of bold self-consciousness, as is shown by his 
last will, in which he calls himself * a man well-known 
in heaven, on earth, and in hell;' yet he knew 

" * With our own might can naught be done, 
Soon were our loss effected.' 

"From head to foot he was full of genius; yet he 
submitted all his knowledge, will, and affection to the 
Word. He had a heart touched by all the lively affec- 
tions of humanity, yet a strength of character which 
pursued with inexorable steadfastness the narrow path 
of truth." — ''Lectures on the Church'^' p. 763, Eng. 

Trans. 

JAMES M. HOPPIN, 

Professor in Yale Theo. Sem. 

"Luther plucked up preaching from the mire in 
which it had fallen, and reinstated it as the central light 
in the house of God. From its fanciful and allegorical 
character, its scholastic and dry and dead forms of 
Aristotelian logic, he restored the true idea of preach- 
ing, viz., the scriptural homily. He spoke freely and 
directly out of the Word. It might be said in a word 
that Luther's preaching, as well as his writing, sprangj 
from his profound conception of the Gospel; of the 
length and breadth, and height and depth, of the 
work and the law of Jesus Christ. He came more 
and more to see the spiritual aspects and inner sub- 
stance of Christian faith. Christ was his unceasing 
theme." 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



49 



MERLE D'AUBIGNE, 

The great French historian of the Reformation, abounds in his writings 
in beautiful tributes to the character of Luther. 

" Luther proved through divine grace the Hving in- 
fluence of Christianity, as no preceding doctor, perhaps, 
had ever felt it before. The Reformation sprang hving 
from his own heart, where God Himself had placed 
it." 

''Some advised the Evangelical princes to attack 
Charles V., sword in hand. But this was mere worldly 
counsel, and the great Reformer, Luther, whom so 
many are pleased to represent as a man of violent 
temper, succeeded in silencing these rash counsellors." 

" Luther was the first to profess the great principles 
of humanity and religious liberty; he was far beyond 
his own age, and even beyond many of the Reformers, 
in toleration." 

" If in the history of the world there be an individual 
we love more than another, it is he. Calvin we vener- 
ate more, but Luther we love more." — Dr. BainVs 
UAiibigne and his Writings^ New York, 1 846. 

THOMAS CARLYLE, 

The late distinguished literary genius, tells the momentous and far- 
reaching results of Luther's stand at Worms in his own striking way, 
as follows: 

" The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on 
the 17th of April, 1 52 1, may be considered as the 
greatest scene in modern European history; the point, 
indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of 
civilization takes its rise. The world's pomp and 
power sit there, on this hand ; on that, stands up for 
3 



50 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



God's truth one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's 
son. Our petition — the petition of the whole world to 
him was : ' Free us ; it rests with thee ; desert us not.' 
Luther did not desert us. It is, as we say, the 
greatest moment in the modern history of men — 
English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, 
America's vast work these two centuries ; French Re- 
volution ; Europe and its work everywhere at present 
— the germ of it all lay there. Had Luther in that 
moment done other, it had all been otherwise." 

In his ** Heroes and Hero-Worship," this remarkable 
writer characterizes the birth of Luther in these 
words : 

" In the whole world that day, there was not a more 
entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this 
miner and his wife. And yet, what were all emperors, 
popes and potentates in comparison ? There was born 
here, once more, a Mighty Man, whose light, was to 
flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of 
the world. The whole world and its history were 
waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great. It 
leads us back to another Birth-hour in a still meaner 
environment, eighteen hundred years ago — of which it 
is fit that we say nothing; that we think only in silence 
— for what words are there! The age of miracles 
past? The age of miracles is forever here! 

"I will call Luther a true Great Man; great in intel- 
lect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our 
most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn 
obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain — so simple, honest, 
spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there 
for quite another purpose than being great ! Ah yes. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



51 



unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the 
heavens; yet in the clefts of its fountains, green and 
beautiful valleys with flowers ! A right Spiritual Hero 
and Prophet; once more, a true Son of Nature and 
Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to 
come yet, will be thankful to heaven." 'CJ 

Again : " They err greatly who imagine that this 
man's courage was ferocity — no accusation could be 
more unjust. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity 
and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. I 
know few things more touching than those soft breath- 
ings of affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this 
great wild heart of Luther. Luther to a slight ob- 
server might have seemed a timid, weak man ; modesty, 
affectionate shrinking tenderness, the chief distinction 
of him. It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart 
like this, once stirred up into defiance, all kindled into 
a heavenly blaze." 

Again : *' As a participant and dispenser of divine 
influences, he shows himself among human affairs a 
true connecting medium and visible Messenger be- 
tween Heaven and Earth; perhaps the most inspired 
of all teachers since the first apostles of his faith ; and 
thus not a poet only, but a Prophet and God-ordained 
Priest, which is the largest form of that dignity, and of 
all dignity." 

LEOPOLD RANKE, 

A distinguished modern historian of Germany. 

" Throughout we see Luther directing his weapons 
on both sides — against the Papacy, which sought to 
reconquer the world then struggling for its emancipa- 



52 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



tion — and against the sects of many names which 
sprang up beside him, assaihng Church and State 
together. The great Reformer, if we may use an 
expression of our days, was one of the greatest con- 
servatives that ever lived." 

M. GELZER. 

"If we recall among other great names in German 
history the Reformers Melanchthon and Zwingli, the 
Saxon Electors, Frederick the Wise and John the 
Constant, Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great, 
or among intellectual celebrities, Klopstock and Les- 
sing, Haman and Herder, Goethe and Schiller, or turn 
to the great religious reformers of the last centuries, 
Spener, Franke, Zinzendorf, Bengel and Lavater, they 
all exhibit many features of relationship with Luther, 
and in some qualities may even surpass him; but not 
one stands out a Luther. One is deficient in the poetic 
impulse, or the fullness and versatility of his nature; 
another wants his depths of religious feeling, his firm- 
ness of purpose and strength of character ; others again 
want his eloquence, or influence over his contempora- 
ries. Luther would not have been Luther without 
these three leading features : his strong faith, his spiri- 
tual eloquence, and firmness of character and purpose. 
He united — and this is the most extraordinary fact 
connected with him — to large endowments of mind 
and heart, and the great gift of imparting these intel- 
lectual treasures, the invincible power of original and 
creative thought, both in resisting and influencing th : 
outer world." — Frout Sketches of Ltither^ accompanying 
Konig's Fifty Pictures of tJie Refor7ncr. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. ^3 

ARCHDEACON J. C. HARE. 

"As he has said of St. Paul's words, his own are not 
dead words, but living creatures, and have hands and 
feet. It no longer surprises us that this man who 
wrote and spoke thus, although no more than a poor 
monk, should have been mightier than the Pope, and 
the Emperor to boot, with all their hosts, ecclesiastical 
and civil — that the rivers of living water should have 
swept half Germany, and in the course of time the 
chief part of northern Europe, out of the kingdom of 
darkness into the region of Evangelical light. No day 
in spring, when life seems bursting from every bud 
and gushing from every pore, is fuller of life than his 
pages ; and if they are not without the strong breezes 
of spring, these too have to bear their part in the work 
of purification. How far superior his expositions of 
Scriptures are in the deep and living apprehension of 
the primary truths of the Gospel to those of the best 
among the Fathers, even of Augustine. If we would 
do justice to any of the master minds of history, we 
must compare them with their predecessors. When 
we come upon these truths in Luther, after wandering 
through the dusky twilight of the preceding centuries, 
it seems almost like the sun-burst of a new revelation, 
or rather as if the sun, which set when St. Paul was 
taken away from the earth, had suddenly started up 
again. Verily, too, it does us good, when we have 
been walking about among those who have only dim 
guesses as to where they are, or whither they are go- 
ing, and who halt and look back, and turn aside at 
every other step, to see a man taking his stand on the 



54 ' TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

Eternal Rock, and gazing steadfastly, with unsealed 
eyes on the very Sun of Righteousness." 

Again, speaking of the inseparable union of Luther 
and the Reformation, he says : 

'* Dean Waddington, after beginning a history of 
the Reformation, felt compelled to turn it into a life of 
the chief agent in that movement. D 'Aubigne's His- 
tory of the Reformation is little more than a life of the 
Reformer, and it is the intense interest of Luther's 
character that has given such wide popularity to that 
work, notwithstanding the great vices of its style and 
manner. 

** Melanchthon may easily be conceived apart from 
the Reformation, as an eminent divine, living in other 
ages of the Church, as the friend of Augustine, or the 
companion of Fenelon. Even Calvin may be sepa- 
rated in thought from the age of the Reformation, and 
may be set among the schoolmen, or in the council 
chamber of Hildebrand or Innocent, or at the Synod 
of Dorc, or among Cromwell's chaplains. But Luther 
apart from the Reformation would cease to be Luther. 
His work was not something external to him, like 
Saturn's ring, on which he shone, and within which 
he revolved, it was his own very self, that grew out of 
him, while he grew out of his work." — Hare's Vindi- 
cation of LiitJier. 

JULES MICKELET, 

The brilliant (Catholic) historian of France. 

" It is not incorrect to say that Luther has been the 
restorer of liberty in modern times. If he did not 
create, he at least courageously affixed his signature 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



55 



to that great revolution which rendered the right of 
examination lawful in Europe. And if we exercise in 
all its plentitude at this day this first and highest privi- 
lege of human intelligence, it is to him we are most 
indebted for it. Nor can we think, speak or write 
without being made conscious at every step of the im- 
mense benefit of this intellectual enfranchisement." 

And he concludes by saying: 

" To whom do I owe the power of publishing what 
I am now inditing, except to this liberator of modern 
thoug-ht?" 



M- 



WILLIAM RUSSELL. 



" Martin Luther, a name which breaks upon the ear 
like the distant booming of signal cannon, or of a 
rising sea — so intimately is it associated with impres- 
sions of a great conflict — of a mighty rising up of 
nations against powers and dominions hoary with pre- 
scriptive reverence — of the breaking down of strong 
holds presumedly rock-based, and reaching to the 
heavens — derives this illustration only from the reli- 
able facts knov/n of the great Reformer's boyhood; that 
they clearly show that the stormy and dangerous 
career which he entered upon in mature life was un- 
sought for, undesired by him, and solely prompted by 
a sudden awakened, imperious sense of duty — strength- 
ened and aided no doubt by an instinctive conscious- 
ness of vast mental energy, and inflexible bravery of 
will, which no peril could disturb, no obstacle, how- 
ever giant-like and apparently insuperable, bend or 
turn aside." — ''Extraordinary Men, their Boyhood, etc.'' 



y^ 



56 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



JOHN J. I. DOLLINGER, 

The renowned papist and professor at Munich. 

" Luther is the grandest man of the people, the most 
popular character that Germany could ever claim. 
The Protestant doctrine was developed in the spirit of 
this German, the greatest German of his age. In the 
presence of the superiority and creative energy of this 
genius, the rising and enterprising part of the nation 
bowed down, in meek reverence and full confidence. 
Recognizing in him, this union between force and 
guiding spirit, they acknowledged him as their master; 
they lived upon his thoughts; and for them, he was 
the hero in whom the nation itself was embodied, with 
all its peculiar traits. They gazed upon him with ad- 
miration; they surrendered themselves to his control ; 
because they saw that it was nothing but their own 
most profound experience which was expressed in his 
writings, more clearly, more eloquently, more power- 
fully than they could ever have expressed it them- 
selves. Accordingly, for Germany the name of Luther 
is not simply the name of a distinguished man ; it is 
the living germ of a period in the national life, it is the 
center of a new circle of ideas, the most direct and apt 
expression of the religious and moral views that con- 
trolled the attention of the German spirit, from the 
mighty influence of which even they who opposed 
them could not entirely escape." p. lO. 

Twenty years later this same Dollinger says : 
"It was Luther's overpowering greatness of spirit 
and amazing many-sidedness which made him the man 
of his time and of his people. It may be said with 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. t^j 

truth, Germany never had a man who so profoundly 
understood his people, and who was so completely 
comprehended, so absolutely absorbed, if we may use 
that term, by the nation, as this Augustinian monk of 
Wittenberg. He controlled the mind and heart of the 
Germanic race as the hand of the musician wakes at 
will the strings of his lyre. No other man in the 
whole Christian era has given to his race as much as 
Luther gave to his — language, a manual of faith fot 
the people (the Catechism), the Bible, the hymns ; and 
everything his adversaries tried to put in conflict or in 
rivalry with him seemed flat and weak and pallid by 
the side of that eloquence with which he entranced 
men. His adversaries stammered; Luther spoke. 
He alone has left the ineffaceable stamp of his own 
spirit alike upon the German tongue and the German 
mind. The very men among the Germans who from 
the depths of their soul abhor him as the terrible here- 
siarch and the betrayer of religion, are forced to speak 
in his words and think in his thoughts." — KircJie unci 
Kirchcji, Papstthiun und Kirdienstaatl' 1 86 1 {I'Curtz 
LeJirb. d. K. G. 74.) 

ARCHBISHOP TENNISON, 

Of the Church of England. 

" Luther was indeed a man of warm temper, and 
uncourtly language ; but (besides that he had his edu- 
cation among those who so vehemently reviled him) 
it may be considered, whether in passing through so 
very rough a sea, it was not next to impossible for 
him not to beat the insulting waves till they foamed 

3* 



58 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



again. Erasmus tells us that he perceived, the better 
any man was, the more he relished the writings of 
Luther ; that his ver}^ enemies allowed him to be a 
man of good life ; that he seemed to him to have in 
his breast certain eminent Evangelical sparks; that it 
was plain that some condemned things in Luther's 
writings, which in Augustine and Bernard passed for 
pious and orthodox." — Bellarmine's Notes of Church 
Exainincd and ReftLtedl' London, 1840, p. 251. 

KARL AUGUST HASE. 

An eminent theologian of Germany, in his description of " Luther's 
death and pubUc character." 

" In the last year of his life, Luther, worn out by 
labor and sickness, took such offence at the immoral- 
ity and wanton modes at Wittenberg, that he left it 
(1545), and only consented to return at the most urg- 
ent supplications of the University and Elector. He 
saw a gloomy period impending over the land of his 
fathers, and longed to depart in peace. Over his last 
days still shone some of the brightness of his best 
years — the words bold, childlike, playful, amid exalted 
thoughts. Having been called to Eisleben to act as 
arbitrator in settling some difficulty of the Counts of 
Mansfeld, he there, on the night of February 18, 1546, 
rested in a last calm and holy sleep. The mutations 
of the times, on whose pinnacle he stood, imparted to 
his life its stronger antitheses. He had regarded the 
Pope as the most holy and most Satanic father. In 
his roused passions emotions had stormily alternated. 
The freedom of the spirit was the object of his life, 
and yet he had been jealous for the letter. In trust 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 5^ 

on all the power of the Spirit, he had siezed the storm 
of revolution by the reins, and yet on occasion had 
suggested that it would be well if the Pope and his 
whole brood were drowned in the Tyrrhene Sea. But 
throughout he had uttered with an unbounded ingen- 
uousness his convictions, and was a stranger to every 
worldly interest. With a powerful sensuousness, he 
stood fast rooted in the earth, but his head reached 
into heaven. In the creative spirit, no man of his time 
was like him ; his discourses were often rougher than 
his own rough time seemed to approve, but in popular 
eloquence his equal has never arisen in Germany. 
From anguish and wrath grew his joy in the contest. 
Where he once had discovered wrong, he saw nothing 
but hell. But his significance rests less upon those 
acts by which he searched and destroyed — others 
could more easily and more readily tear themselves 
away from the old church — it rests much more upon 
his power of building up, on his earnest full faith and 
love; though in hours of gloom, through the tempta- 
tions of Satan, he imagined that he had lost God, and 
Christ, and all together. Especially, in opposition to 
his antagonists, did he believe, and declare without 
reservation, that he was a chosen instrument of God, 
known in heaven, on earth, and in hell. But with 
himself, personally considered, he would have nothing 
to do; he would recognize no doctrine of Luther, and 
his sublime trust in God pointed not to his per- 
sonal delivery from dangers, but to the faith that God 
could every day create ten * Doctor Martins.' Insipid 
objections and narrow vindications are forgotten; such 
a man belongs not to one party, but to the German 
people and to Christendom." 



6o TRIBUTES TO LUTHP:R. 

K. R. HAGENBACH. 

" It may be said that Martin Luther became em- 
phatically the reformer of the German Church, and 
thus the reformer of a great part of the Universal 
Church, by his eminent personal character and heroic 
career, by the publication of his theses, by sermons 
and expositions of Scripture, by disputations and bold 
controversial writings, by numerous letters and circu- 
lar epistles, by advice and warning, by intercourse with 
persons of all classes of society, by pointed maxims 
and hymns, but especially by his translation of the 
sacred Scriptures into the German language. It is 
* * unjust * * to maintain that Luther's pro- 
found and dynamic interpretation of the sacrament, 
whidi on that very account was less perspicuous and 
intelligible, had its origin in nothing but partial stu- 
pidity or stubbornness. The opinion which each of 
these reformers (Zwinglius and Luther) entertained 
concerning the Sacraments, was most intimately con- 
nected with his whole religious tendency, which, in its 
turn, stood in connection with the different develop- 
ment of the churches which they respectively founded." 
Compendmni of the History of Doctjdncs, Edinburgh, 
1847, Vol. II, p. 156. 

J. M. V. AUDIN, 

A French Jesuitical Historian. 

" Luther's translation of the Bible is a noble monu- 
ment of literature, a vast enterprise which seemed to 
require more than the life of man ; but which Luther 
accomplished in a few years. The poetic soul finds 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 6 1 

in this translation evidences of genius, and expressions 
as natural, beautiful and melodious, as in the original 
lanp-uacres. Luther's translation sometimes renders 
the primitive phrase with touching simplicity and mag- 
nificence, and receives all the modifications which he 
wishes to impart to it. It is simple in the recital of 
the patriarch, glowing in the predictions of the proph- 
ets, familiar in the Gospels, and colloquial in the 
Epistles. The imagery of the original is rendered 
with undeviating fidelity ; the translation occasionally 
approaches the text. We must not then be astonished 
at the enthusiasm which Saxony felt at the appearance 
of Luther's version. Both Catholics and Protestants 
regarded it as an honor done to their ancient idiom." — 
Life of Luther, Chap. xxiv. 

H. A. TAINE. 

" We take the precise man for a religious man. We 
are content to see him stiff in his black coat, choked 
with a white cravat, with a prayer-book in his hand. 
We confound piety with decency, propriety, perma- 
nent and perfect regularity. We proscribe to a man 
of faith all candid speech, all bold gesture, all fire and 
dash in word and act; we are shocked by Luther's 
rude words, the bursts of laughter that shook his 
mighty frame, his workaday rages, his plain and free 
speaking, the audacious familiarity with which he treats 
Christ and the Deity. We do not remember that these 
freedoms and this recklessness are simply signs of en- 
tire belief, that warm and unbounded conviction is too 
sure of itself to be tied down to an irreproachable 



52 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

style, that primitive religion consists not of punctilios, 
but of emotions." — English Literature, I., 384. 

STANG'S LIFE OF LUTHER, 

Last paragraph. 

" We stand before the image of the great Reformer 
with the full conviction that between the first century, 
when Christianity -appeared in its youth, and the six- 
teenth, when it obtained the maturity of its riper age, 
not one of our race has appeared, in whom the ever- 
creative Spirit of God, the Spirit of light and of law, 
has found nobler embodiment, or wrought with richer 
sequence." 

ROBERT MONTGOMERY, 

An English preacher and poet. 

'* In the rugged grandeur of his faith, he may well 
te considered as the Elijah of the Reformation ; while 
his life, by the stern and solemn realities of its expe- 
riences, and the almost ideal evolutions of events, b> 
which it was accompanied, constitutes indeed the em- 
bodied poem of European Protestantism. 

*' Luther, the Reformef, is but an outward and visi- 
ble index of the inward and invisible characteristics 
of Luther, the Man. * * * * Wonderfully and 
wi"5ely the trials and experiences of his inner nature 
wjie providentially overruled, and wrought into ex- 
perimental connection with those religious achieve- 
ments which have made the name of Martin Luther 
immortal. 

** Chief o'er all the galaxy of lights 
Which stud the firmament of Christian fame, 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 

Shone Luther forth — that i7iiracle of men /" 
A Gospel Hero, who with faith subhme 
Fulmined the hghtnings of God's flaming Word 
Full on the lowers of superstitions' home, 
Till lo ! they crumbled ; and his withering flash 
Yet sears the ruin with victorious play. 

' Let grateful reverence long that work admire, 
O'er which a seraph's wings might shake with joy, 
By Luther, with colossal power, achieved. 
There was the Word Almighty, from the grave 
Of buried language, into breathing life 
Summoned, in saintly glory to arise, 
And speak to souls, what souls could understand. 

The words of truth 
Eternal gave their hoar}^ secrets up 
While God's own language into Luther's passed, 

* * ^ * till behold, the voice 
Of Jesus out of classic fetters came. 
And, like its Author, to the poor man preached. 

' And such was Luther, when the clock of time 
Sounded the hour for his decreed approach, 
He was a mouthpiece of oppress'd mankind, 
A great Interpreter of tongueless wants 
And pains, which lack'd an intellectual power 
Their own profundity to tell, or prove. 
Yet, Preludes were there, which portended change. 
Some dawning heralds of a deeper life. 
Diviner morals and a purer creed. 
Ere the lone monk from out his convent poured 
Those thunder peals .of theologic truth, 
That started Leo from a sensual trance. 
And shook the Vatican, with such a force 
That yet its chambers %dbrat€ with the shock 
They gave them ! though three hundred years 
Have swept their wings o'er Martin Luther's grave. 
There was a ripple in the mental tide 
Awakened ; streams of holier thought began 



63 



64 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

With sudden freshness, and more sweeping force, 

Heavenward and onward through the heart to roll 

Till lo ! at length a master-mind proceeds 

Forth from the secrecies of convent life, 

In whom the Spirit of the age can find 

An Incarnation of itself prepar'd 

The mind to utter, and its motion wield," 



H. PICK, 

The historian. 

"The difficulties which Luther had to encounter 
transcended all conception. In the Old Testament 
especially, these were so great that he often spent four 
weeks in reflection and inquiry upon a single word, 
before he was satisfied how it should be translated into 
German. It is therefore with justice that'' Matthesius 
calls this translation of the Bible one of the greatest 
wonders which God accomplished through Dr. Luther; 
so that it seems to an attentive reader as if the Holy 
Spirit by the mouth of the prophets and apostles had 
spoken in our German language." — '* Life and deeds of 
Luther r 

ARCHDEACON CHARLES HARDWICK, 
Late of the University of Cambridge, England. 

" In that large and sturdy frame, with appetites of 
corresponding vehemence and passions ever calling 
loudly for restraint, there worked a spirit such as 
rarely tenants human flesh — commanding, fierce, im- 
petuous, dauntless and indomitable, while maintaining 
what he felt to be the cause of truth and righteousness, 
and yet combining with these manlier elements an 
awful consciousness of his dependence upon God, and 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 5^ 

childlike singleness of purpose. * ^ * He had 
every quality of thought, feeling and style that charac- 
terizes authors who are destined to impress and elevate 
the multitude; he was homely, practical and always 
perfectly intelligible; while the cogency of his argu- 
ments, the force and eloquence of his appeals and his 
convulsive earnestness, electrified in almost equal 
measure both his readers and his hearers. It has been 
calculated that in one year (1523) as many as 183 
books were published in his name." - 

JOSEPH B. BITTINGER, 

Pastor of Presbyterian church, Sewickly, Pa. 

" His name is before the world, somewhat as Schil- 
ler's Bell, in that most beautiful of his poems. It has 
been lifted out of the pit, freed from the mold and bur- 
nished. Behold, it rises up greater and grander, until 
it is lodged in the belfry — way above the turmoil, and 
strife, and trouble of the world in the streets below — 
speaking peace and quiel to men ; with heaven for its 
tent — the blue outstretched heaven — neighbor to the 
thunder, whose voice it shall echo.' There it hangs ; 
swinging with melodious sound ; wafting it away off to 
the north, away off to the south, and ringing out in all 
directions a word of peace, a word of hope, a word of 
consolation; speaking to the earth below of the heavens 
above, and drawing all men's hearts from this lower 
evil world to that upper and better country. 



66 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

CHARLES HODGE, 

Late of Princeton. 

" Luther, glorious and lovely as he was — and he is 
certainly one of the grandest and most attractive fig- 
ures in ecclesiastical history. =5^ * * ]S[q qj^^ 
knows Luther who has not read pretty faithfully the 
five octavo volumes of his letters, collected and edited 
by De Wette. These exhibit not only his power, 
fidelity and courage, but also his gentleness, disinter- 
estedness, and his childlike simplicity, as well as his 
joyousness and humor." — Syst. Theology, iii, 484. 

JOSEPH CUMMINGS, 

Late Pres. Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. 

" The instrument selected for the Reformation, bears 
a name that has become a household word — a name 
that shines with greater lustre than the name of Milton, 
of Shakespeare, or of Newten — because associated with 
more glorious triumphs — a name that has left behind 
it a legacy of an unshackeled Christianity — an un- 
clasped Bible — a preached Gospel. 

'* Kings and emperors, have made pilgrimages to the 
tomb of that monk, and nations cherish in their hearts 
his imperishable name. Charles V., Frederick the 
Great, Peter of Russia, and Wallenstein, and, lastly, 
Napoleon, visited the spot where the remains of the 
Reformer lie ; and even these names, the sounds of 
which still shake the casements of the Avorld, seem but 
ciphers beside the dust of Martin Luther." — Lectures 
on the Apocalypse, pp. 122, 155. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 67 

CHARLES P. KRAUTH, 

Professor in Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. 

"The greatness of some men only makes us feel 
that though they did well, others in their place, might 
have done just as they did. Luther had that excep- 
tional greatness which convinces the world, that he 
alone could have done the work. He was not a mere 
mountain-top, catching a little earlier the beams which, 
by their own course, would soon have found the val- 
leys ; but rather by the divine ordination under which 
he rose, like the sun itself, without which the light on 
mountain or valley would have been but a starlight or 
moonlight. He was not a secondary orb, reflecting 
the light of another orb, as was Melanchthon, and even 
Calvin; still less the moon of a planet, as Bucer or 
Brentius ; but the center of undulations which filled a 
system with glory. Yet, though he rose wondrously 
to a divine ideal, he did not cease to be a man of men. 
He won the trophies of power and the garlands of 
affection. Potentates feared him, and little children 
played with him. He has monuments in marble and 
bronze, medals in silver and gold; but his noblest 
monument is the best love of the best hearts, and the 
brightest, purest impression of his image has been left 
in the* souls of regenerated nations. He was the best 
teacher of freedom and of loyalty. He has made the 
righteous throne stronger, and the innocent cottage 
happier. He knew how to laugh and how to weep; 
therefore millions laughed with him, and millions wept 
for him. He was tried by deep sorrow and brilliant 
fortune; he begged the poor scholar's bread, and from 



68 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER,. 

emperor and estates of the realm received an embassy, 
with a prince at its head, to ask him to untie the knot 
which defied the power of the soldier and the sagacity 
of the statesman; it was he who added to the Litany 
the words : * In all time of our tribulation, in all time 
of our prosperity, help us, good Lord ;' but whether 
lured by the subtlest flattery or assailed by the powers 
of hell, tempted with the mitre or threatened with the 
stake, he came of more than conqueror in all. He 
made a world rich forevermore and, stripping himself 
by perpetual charities, died in poverty. He knew how 
to command, for he had learned how to obey. Had 
he been less courageous, he would have attempted 
nothing; had he been less cautious, he would have 
ruined all; the torrent was resistless, but the banks 
/ were deep. He tore up the mightiest evils by the root, 
/ but shielded with his own life the tenderest bud of 
/ good; he combined the aggressiveness of a just radi- 
calism with the moral resistance — which seemed to the 
fanatic the passive weakness — of a true conservatism. 
Faith-inspired, he was faith-inspiring. Great in act as 
he was in thought, proving himself fire with fire, ' in- 
ferior eyes grew great by his example, and put on the 
dauntless spirit of resolution.' The world knows his 
faults. He could not hide what he was. His trans- 
parent candor gave his enemies the material of their 
misrepresentation ; but they cannot blame his infirmi- 
ties without bearing witness to the nobleness which 
made him careless of appearances, in a world of de- 
famers. For himself he had as little of the virtue of 
caution as he had, toward others, of the vice of dissimu- 
lation. Living under thousands of jealous and hating 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



69 



eyes, in the broadest light of day, the testimony of 
enemies but fixes the result, that his faults were those 
of a nature of the most consummate grandeur and ful- 
ness, faults mjore precious than the virtues of the com- 
mon great^Four potentates ruled the mind of Europe 
in the Reformation — the Emperor, Erasmus, the Pope, 
and Luther. The Pope wanes, Erasmus is little, the 
Emperor is nothing, but Luther abides as a power for 
all time. His imiage casts itself upon the current of 
ages, as the mountain mirrors itself in the river that 
winds at its foot — the mighty fixing itself immutably 
upon the changing." — " Conservative Reformation^ 

BAYARD TAYLOR. 

" The man who re-created the German language — I 
hardly think the expression too strong — was Martin 
Luther. It was his fortune and that of the world that 
he was so equally great in many directions — as a per- 
sonal character, as a man of action, as a teacher and 
preacher, and finally, as an author. No one before 
him, and no one for nearly two hundred years after 
him, saw that the German tongues must be sought for 
in the mouths of the people — that the exhausted ex- 
pression of the earlier ages could not be revived, but 
that the newer, fuller and richer speech, then in its 
childhood must at once be acknowledged and adopted. 
He made it the vehicle of what was divinest in human 
language; and those who are not informed of his 
manner of translating the Bible, cannot appreciate the 
originality of his work, or the marvellous truth of the 
instinct which led him to it. * * * * In regard 
to the fullness, the strength, the tenderness, the vital 



70 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



power of language, I think Luther's Bible decidedly 
superior to our own. * * * Luther was a poet as 
well as a theologian, and, as a poet, he was able to feel 
as no theologian could, the intrinsic difference of 
spirit and character in the different books of the old 
Testament — not only to feel, but, through the sympa- 
thetic quality of the poetic nature, to reproduce them. 
These ten years, from 1522 to 1532, * * * ^^ere 
not only years of unremitting, prayerful, conscientious 
labor, but also of warm, bright, joyous intellectual 
creation. His style possesses strength and nobility, 
* * * but he was equally capable of expressing 
the warmth, the tenderness and the bravery of the 
original. * * * T\iQ letter which Luther wrote 
to his little son, is as delightfully artless and childlike 
a piece of writing as anything which Hans Christian 
Andersen has ever produced. * * * The influence 
of Luther on German literature cannot be explained 
until we have seen how sound and vigorous and 
manysided was the new spirit which he infused into 
the language." — Studies hi German Literature, Chap. v. 

CHARLES A. STORK, 

Late President of the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa. 

"Part of the secret, then, of the vast influence 
Luther exerted, is to be found in his completeness. 
He was all around a full, a complete man. Perhaps 
to some that will seem a very strange thing to say 
about him. In his energy, fire, his torrent outbursts, 
he seems a chaotic creature, the very opposite of 
the round, completely proportioned man. But by 
completeness in a man we are not to understand pol- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



71 



ish, symmetry, rounded proportions; but the full 
equipment of the nature with all the great distinctive 
features of humanity. It is in this respect that we say 
Luther was a marvelously complete man. He was 
myriad-sided, multiform, cariying in his one individu- 
ality all the great types and features of human nature, 
at the top of their power. 

" It is of course impossible to show this in detail : we 
can only suggest its truth with reference to those great 
cardinal features which characterize human nature. A 
very obvious classification of this sort is that by which 
we distinguish men as emotional, intellectual, practical 
or active. Every man, we are accustomed to say, 
belongs by his peculiar make to one of these classes : 
that is, he is predominantly a man of feeling, of 
thought, or of activity. To be a great man, is to pos- 
sess, in an eminent degree, one or two of these quali- 
ties; rarely, indeed, do we find that even men who 
tower above their fellows unite them all harmoniously. 
We have only to call to mind Aristotle the unemo- 
tional, Plato the unpractical, Calvin with his cold side, 
and Wesley with his lack of intellectual grasp, to see 
how great a man may be and yet fall short of the 
greatest. In Luther we have the rare spectacle of a 
man sent into the world who was complete in his 
whole make. Emotionally, intellectually, practically, 
he was complete and justly proportioned. 

** Take him on his emotional side ; and we feel at 
once that as a religious reformer he laid that deep 
hold in the common human heart, because he himself, 
in a most vivid and vital history, had lived through 
the divine life of religion he commended to men. He 



72 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



was not, men felt then and have felt ever since, argu- 
ing about God and religion for any mere intellectual 
apprehension of them. No, he had lived with God, 
loved him, rejoiced in him, and now out of that deep 
experience he proclaimed him. It is not without rea- 
son that so much stress is laid in every history of the 
man on the striking feature of the long struggle he 
went through to find God. The sudden death of his 
friend, the thunder-storm, the monastic exercises, the 
experience at Rome, all these are the lightning flashes 
which let us see the rugged way by which he climbed 
out of the pit up to the cross of Christ. Then he 
spoke to men of what he knew. The Old and New 
Testaments he had lived through in his own experi- 
ence before he translated them. His preaching and 
theology had a fire in them and a strong warmth of 
life because they came from God through a burning 
experience in his own bosom. Through his denun- 
ciations of the Pope, his exhortation to Christians, his 
controversies with the theologians, rang the thrilling 
voice of one who could say, * I have believed ; there- 
fore have I spoken.' 

" It was said of him that in society he would often 
drop his conversation with those near and be silent ; 
when questioned, he explained that he stopped to con- 
verse with God: so real and near was his heavenly 
Father to him. He had a great, living, hungering 
heart, which nothing but God could fill; and after God 
he sought as a hunter seeks for game. When he found 
him he lived in him. Through all he says and does, 
that is continually present. When Luther speaks we 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



73 



seem to feel God close by ; his intense emotional life 
in the love and service of this unspeakable friend makes 
of God a wonderful reality. It is this that enabled him 
to grasp the heart of Europe of his day, and to hold it 
through all these centuries. 

" But that is not all. Others have had the deep, warm 
religious experience of Luther; but they never revo- 
lutionized men's thinking and living as he did. They 
lacked the intellectual element. 

Luther, in addition to his deep piety, was a great 
theologian. His robust intellect was not content to 
be put aside or into the back-ground when the ques- 
tion of God and his service came up. He loved God 
not only with all his heart and soul and strength, but 
also with all his mind; and having found him as a 
Father, he never wearied of seeking to solve him as a 
problem. The more he loved God the more he wanted 
to know of him, and could not rest till what he had 
experienced of his grace he had put into philosophic 
form. Phillips Brooks, in his speech in New York the 
other day, denied that Luther was a theologian, affirm- 
ing that his force lay only in the moral and mystical 
elements of his character. That seems a strange state- 
ment to make of the author of the commentary on 
Galatians. True, he was not a theologian in the logi- 
cal sense in which St. Augustine and Calvin were. 
But that he was a theologian, and a most profound 
one, can never be questioned by any one who has 
pondered his discussion on the Incarnation, that cen- 
tral dogma of Christianity. >k * ^ ^k -^y^ need 
not hesitate to declare that it is that magnifying of the 
Person and work of Christ that has helped theologi- 
4 



74 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



cally to make Luther the power he has been in the 
world. 

" We have only one element more to consider, and 
that is the active nature of the man. Luther's fervid, 
emotional experience, and his profound study of truth, 
issued in making him one of the most practical of men. 
He did not begin by propounding theological propo- 
sitions, nor by exhorting men to embrace the joy of a 
new divine life. His first religious act as a Reformer 
was to attack an abuse — an abuse so palpable that 
every man could understand it. He attacked the sale 
of indulgences : how characteristic of the man that 
was! His religion, so ardent and mystical, so pro- 
found in its cogitations, comes out on the world's 
stage and sets itself at the business of reform. What 
slavery, intemperance, political corruption, have been 
in our day, that was the sale of indulgences then. And 
so the practical man strikes at once at the living, ram- 
pant evil. Through his whole life we see the same 
mark. In his early life he attacked the Pope : it was 
because the Pope then was the great abuse that needed 
to be reformed. At a later day the same practical 
instinct makes him turn his energies on the image- 
breakers, the extremists, the fanatics in the church. 
They were then the abuse needing reformation. At 
one time he is the ardent preacher of freedom, that no 
man is to stand between God and man, and that every 
man must be free to interpret the Bible for himself. 
But when freedom ran to license, we see him in the 
Peasants' War teaching men their obligations to sub- 
mit to the powers of government. He is the defender 
of law and order. 



a 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



75 



" Always he is the man who sees how the great prin- 
ciples of truth and righteousness are to be applied to 
common life : he is intent on having the New Testa- 
ment ideal of life wrought out in the affairs of every- 
day.r^jAnd this made him a power. Too many men 
are like a furnace and boiler where mighty forces are 
generated for use, but in whose structure there is no 
provision for connecting the force and the work to be 
done. Not so here : what Luther felt, what he saw, 
that he understood to apply immediately to life. 

" Of course, all that has been said here is the barest 
suggestion of what might be said in detail. But it 
serves to outline the direction in which we must look 
to understand the revolutionary force with which 
Luther wrought on the world. To feel deeply, to see 
clearly, to apply skillfully : these make up much of the 
secret of his power. And what is all this but to say, 
he was a round, complete man ? Loving God with 
all the energies of his soul, pondering the mysteries of 
the divine being and his working till they grew clear 
and luminous, applying the sense of the divine pres- 
ence and love to the every-day work of life — this is 
Luther." — Ltithcran Observer, Dec. 7, 1883. 

PHILIP SCHAFF, 

Of Union Theol, Seminary, of New York, member of Amer. Com. 
on New Version of Bible, and author of many and learned works, in an 
article on " Luther as a Husband and Father." 

*' In this fourth centennial of his birth, all sides of 
his (Luther's) character and influence are revived and 
brought to the remembrance of the present generation. 
He figures in history as the great Reformer who set 



^6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

in motion the mighty struggle for religious and civil 
liberty throughout Europe; as the founder of the 
Lutheran Church, which is one of the largest Protest- 
ant denominations, and second to none in every de- 
partment of sacred and secular learning ; as the prince 
of Bible translators, whose version still has the 
strongest hold upon German-speaking Christendom, 
and is used Sunday by Sunday and day by day in 
every Lutheran Church and household ; as a hymnist 
whose *Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott ' inspired the 
advancing armies of the Reformation, and struck the 
key-note to the richest hymnology of the world. — 
Truly, greatness enough to insure the immortality of 
half a dozen men! And this hero was the son of a 
peasant — a humble monk, and then a professor of 
theology, with no advantages but his genius, his will, 
and his faith in God. There is no man in history after 
the incomparable St. Paul, who accomplished more for 
his race than Martin Luther. 

The domestic life of Luther has far more than a 
private biographical interest. It is one of the factors 
of modern civilization. Without Luther's reformation, 
clerical celibacy with all its risks and evil conse- 
quences would still be the universal law in all 
Western churches. There would be no married 
clergymen and clerical families in which the duties and 
virtues of conjugal, parental and filial relations could 
be practised. It has been proven that a larger propor- 
tion of able and useful men and women have been born 
and raised in households of Protestant pastors during 
the last three hundred years than in any other class of 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



77 



society. Viewed simply as a husband and father, and 
as one of the founders of the clerical family, Luther 
deserves to be esteemed and honored as one of the 
greatest benefactors of mankind." — The Critic, Nov. 
lO, 1883. 

Speaking of Luther's Battle-hymn (Kin' Feste Burg) 
Dr. Schaff says: 

" It is the great Marseillaise of Protestantism — its 
words and notes thrill on the heart like bugle-blasts 
from Heaven." 

G. L. PLITT, 

Late of Eiiangen University, Germany. 

" In the history of the Christian Church, next to the 
Apostles, there is no such prominent a personality as 
Martin Luther, and no event in the church has cut so 
deeply as the Reformation." 

J. M. BUCKLEY, 

Editor of the Christian Advocate, New York. 

"Some men have the power to reach nations, and 
project their thoughts into successive generations. 
They possess a certain magnetic quality, and impul- 
sive force of brain, by which they become the world's 
citizens. Martin Luther was just such a character as 
this. He belongs as fully to the nineteenth century 
as to the sixteenth, and he Avill be as much at home 
in the twenty-fifth as he now is in this century. We 
do not wonder that all Protestant Germany has been 
celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth; 
that even DoUinger, the founder of Old Catholicism, 
has lately eulogized Luther as an ornament to the 



;8 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



German race ; that in Erfurt, where the young monk 
first saw the great black-letter Bible which shone into 
his soul, they have just had special festivities in the 
Reformer's memory; and that the Germans of every 
land are rearing monuments, establishing special funds, 
and organizing great public services, in loving mem- 
ory of the greatest German mind from the time when 
Germania was only a savage Roman province down to 
the Empire of the present time. 

" There are strong grounds for our American respect 
for the great name of Luther. His birth preceded the 
discovery of this country by Columbus only nine 
years; but the most of the followmg century, the i6th, 
was occupied with Catholic colonization, especially in 
South America. When, however, the Preformation 
became an established fact, both on the Continent and 
in Great Britain, North America was thrown wide 
open for Protestant immigration and ecclesiastical pro- 
pagation. The Canadas were largely French, and the 
Jesuits were prosecuting their lines of missionary work 
along the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, the lake chain, 
and the Pacific coast. But there was, with the open- 
ing of the seventeenth century, a sudden incoming of 
Protestants from every part of the Continent, and from 
the Church of England, which turned its persecuting 
hand against all non-conformists. The Puritans were 
not persecuted by Roman Catholics, but by so-called 
Protestants, and were fugitives, first to Holland, before 
they sailed in the Mayflower for the Massachusetts 
coast. The Germans who came to this country 
were Protestants, and had received their spiritual 
light through Luther and his immediate successors. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



79 



Wherever they went they carried with them the fervor 
and courage that distinguished the heroic son of the 
Saxon miner. Even WiUiam Penn's colony of Qua- 
kers had a large Lutheran coloring, for Penn had been 
some time in Germany, had offered special induce- 
ments to Germans to emigrate to America, and even 
had his head-quarters at Frankfort-on-Main for help- 
ing Germans to these provinces. He was the founder 
of the first thoroughly German colony in this country. 
When the Swedes, together with the Danes, came in 
large numbers to this country, and settled in New 
York, in New Jersey, and all along the Delaware, 
giving their language and national type to many sec- 
tions of country, they also brought with them the 
spirit and influence of Luther, who had given his the- 
ology to the whole Scandinavian peninsula. No bet- 
ter qualities were ever transferred to this country than 
came over with the families who, either willingly or 
by force, had derived their theology and religious ex- 
perience from Luther. 

" This can be seen in the Revolutionary war. The 
Lutherans, represented by many such heroes in coun- 
cil and on the battle field as the Muhlenbergs, helped 
us from the beginning to the end. The Keystone 
State, with its large element of Protestants of the Luth- 
eran type, has been largely and heartily identified with 
the national life, all the way down from the time the 
bell rang out freedom from the old belfry of Independ- 
ence Hall, to the battle of Gettysburg which decided 
the death of the rebellion. 

" As to the Lutheran theology in this country, it has 
generally taken shape from that of Germany, but nevei 



8o TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

falling to the skeptical depth that we have seen in the 
Fatherland. Here it has been conservative, always 
learned and searching, but confined in large measure 
to the German mind and language. Its general influ- 
ence has been pure and helpfial to our general relig- 
ious development. 

"As a nation, then, we have ample reason to revere 
the memory of Luther. He was the Reformer of all 
the reformers of his century. Without him they had 
not been. He has been our heroic Protestant as fully 
as if he had been born on our shores, for his children 
came hither, and have helped us to fight all our bat- 
tles and rear this new western civilization. 

" So as the Germans of the old country think in 
these days of their grand Luther, and gather about the 
hearthstones of the Reformation, and rejoice over the 
incoming of the Protestant era, American Christians 
have ample ground to rejoice with them, and be thank- 
ful, too, for what it has done for us. The central bat- 
tle-field was Germany, and the victory everywhere de- 
pended on the victory there. Luther was too large 
for one continent, or for one century. Very beautiful 
was the way the multitude made their filial offerings 
to his memory in dear old Wittenberg a fortnight 
since. Two thousand Protestant ministers, gathered 
from every land, were there. The very houses were 
covered with reverent visitors, who spoke many 
tongues. The streets and alleys and market-places 
were crowded with guests. The aged Emperor Wil- 
helm deputed his son, the Crown Prince " Fritz," to 
represent the imperial family, and so that son took 
with him from Berlin an immense laurel wreath, and 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. gj 

proceeding to the church in whose floor Hes Luthers 
dust, laid the wreath upon the slab. The organ pealed 
out the great warrior's battle-hymn, "A strong tower 
is our God." The vast audience took it up, the multi- 
tude in the streets caught the notes, and the singing 
echoed far out beyond the walls into the surrounding 
country. It w^as a fitting tribute of the royalty of 
birth to the higher royalty of goodness and worth. It 
is only a part of the old story : ' Do the right, in the 
noonday or the midnight, and the world will honor the 
deed, and not forget the birthday of the doer.' " 

A. W. THOROLD, 

Bishop of Rochester, England. 

"A great man's memory rises^like a pillar over the 
sea, flashing a revolving light. The light is always 
there, but not always visible on every side. So to the 
different nations in turn, and at intervals, when they 
are receptive of the lesson, the dead heroes speak. 
Men rule their fellows, not only by the vividness of 
their personality, but by its many-sidedness. St. Paul 
was many men in one. So was Luther. In this they 
agree, that they were intensely human. 

" In Luther's history there were several epochs, 
familiar to every schoolboy, milestones not only in his 
personal development, but in the progress of the world. 
His conversion into the vital and spiritual apprehension 
of God; his public burning of the Papal bull; his nail- 
ing of the theses to the church door; his public trial 
at Worms; his friendly imprisonment in the castle of 
Wartburg; his domestic life — all know these. Who 



82 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER, 

quite knows their significance? To understand a man, 
and his hfe, we must take into account what physiolo- 
gists say are the two main factors in conduct, heredity 
and environment. 

" Luther's parents were plain people of the laboring 
class, but God-fearing and appreciative of education. 
All round him was the Catholic Church, fast sinking 
into an epicurean paganism, and Germany in the grasp 
of Italy. The English historian, Froude, who enthusi- 
astically admires Luther, and ungrudgingly commends 
him, does not hesitate to say that he changed the face 
of Europe. What an Europe to change! See what 
he possessed and also combined. Fearless and auda- 
cious to a degree, he had his awful moments of reaction 
and despondency, which help us to come nearer to him, 
and learn of him through that nearness. Rugged and 
abrupt, he was infinitely tender, and there was a well 
of beautiful love in his heart. 

" It will always be a matter of controversy whether 
or no he helped the Reformation and materially aug- 
mented his personal influence by his marriage. It is 
certain that he thereby vindicated the freedom of mar- 
riage of the clergy, and bequeathed an exquisite ideal 
of conjugal and parental love. He almost recon- 
structed the German language by his greatest achieve- 
ment, the translation of the Bible into his native tongue. 
A classical scholar, he was a constant student of Scrip- 
ture, and all theologians may learn from him that the 
Bible is the true storehouse of divinity. 

" His hymns are the inheritance of the Church ; his 
Table-Talk is the * heart affluence of discursive talk,' 
which has a lesson of its own to a people who are be- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



83 



coming almost proverbial for their taciturnity, and 
whom some think to be too apt to hide from strangers, 
eager to enjoy their humor, and to borrow from their 
experience, the kindliness that has too easily, perhaps 
sometimes in self-respect, come to shroud itself under 
a very Englishman's reserve. 

"As a preacher, he did not aim at rhetorical or emo- 
tional self-display. He had an eye to the multitude of 
young people, children, servants, all round him. Less 
shrewd than Erasmus, less gentle than Melanchthon, 
perhaps less logical than Calvin, certainly less divested 
of sacramentarian error — he towers above them all as 
George Washington towers over the heroes of the re- 
volution. 

" To him, as has been well said, Rome owes her re- 
surrection — to him, it may be said with equal truth, 
millions of souls their salvation. England loves his 
memory, for what has not he done for her national and 
religious life ? The free millions of the United States 
may well rise up and do him honor, by cherishing his 
example, pondering his history, and maintaining his 
creed." — Phila. Press oi^ov. lO, 1883. 

GEORGE BANCROFT, 

The celebrated American historian. 

" Luther was more dogmatical than his opponents ; 
though the deep philosophy with which his mind was 
imbued repelled the use of violence to effect conver- 
sion in religion. He was wont to protest against pro- 
pagating reform by persecution and massacres; and 
with wise moderation, an admirable knowledge of 
human nature, a familiar and almost ludicrous quaint- 



84 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ness of expression, he would deduce from his great 
principle of justification by faith alone, the sublime 
doctrine of freedom of conscience." — History of the 
United States, Vol. I., p. 274. 

Again, in a letter of regret at his inability of attend- 
ing the Luther Memorial Services held under the 
auspices of Princeton College and Seminary, he said : 

" I agree with those who rate his (Luther's) import- 
ance to the world at the highest, and look forward 
with great pleasure to read what will be done in his 
honor on his birthday, in a place crowned with mem- 
ories like Princeton College." 

EGBERT C. SMYTH, 

Professor at Andover, Mass. 

"'The world for two hundred years has hated no 
one as it hates me,' Luther said, reviewing his life. 
To-day Roman Catholic as well as Protestant Germany 
does him honor, and the civilized world ranks him 
among its chief benefactors. A man so great and 
mighty deserves something very different from blind 
admiration. He had great faults. He cannot be re- 
garded as a perfect exponent of the Reformation which 
he introduced. It is more important carefully to study 
the man and his work than to eulogize him. Yet we 
believe that the deeper the insight gained into his 
character, the more justly his actions are weighed, the 
more perfectly his nature is understood, the grander 
he will seem. There was more of humanity in him 
than in any other man of his time. Therefore he had 
more power than any other. Melanchthon was a bet- 
ter scholar, Zwingli a calmer and more sagacious rea- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 85 

soner, Calvin had a more systematic and organizing 
mind, Charles the Fifth is more renowned for his 
knowledge of men, especially their weaknesses; but no 
one ranks with Luther in his understanding of human 
nature, its needs and capacities, its ruin and its glory. 
No one touched men at so many points, helped them 
so much, entered so profoundly into the deepest 
secrets of their hearts, opened to them such sources of 
strength. 

'*It is impossible to explain him by his times, how- 
ever conditioned and limited he was by them. That 
the son of a miner, a peasant in a line of peasants, 
should stand above learned scholars and doctors, car- 
dinals and popes, statesmen and princes, as a leader of 
thought, a controlling force in human affairs, is a his- 
torical fact worthy in our day of profoundest thought. 
We know of no way to account for it, which can stand 
a moment's careful scrutiny, that excludes the admis- 
sion of a divine equipment, a divine call, and a divine 
mission of particular men, now as truly as in the days 
of Moses or Paul. 

"We do not narrow his place in history, but rather 
explain why it is so large, when we conceive of him 
almost exclusively as a religious reformer. Only we 
must not be misled by the word 'Reformer.' Like 
the word * Protestant,' it may have too negative an 
interpretation. Luther's work was constructive. He 
was a great builder, not so much in the realm of out- 
ward institution, of ecclesiastical polity, or even of the- 
ology, as in that which underlies all true divinity and 
useful church organization, in the realm of spiritual 
life. He smote the Rock from which flowed living 



S6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

waters. He turned men from a religion of ceremony 
to worship in spirit and truth ; from the weary rounds 
of a legal service to the glad obedience of gratitude 
and love; from bondage to liberty and lordship. 

" The providential preparation of Luther for his work 
was as marked as that of Moses or Paul. He was 
educated into a perfect knowledge of the system to 
whose overthrow his energies were to be devoted. In 
the family, the parish school, the university, the con- 
vent, he tested to the full the religious resources of 
that system. He believed in it, and he tried it in good 
faith and thoroughly. His personal experience is a 
demonstration of its insufficiency. His one aim was 
righteousness. He could not gain it under the condi- 
tions prescribed by the Romanism which he finally 
rejected. Not that the Roman Catholic Church does 
not produce saints. Not that Luther found the peace 
and triumph he gained without help from that Church. 
But this : the legal system which confronted and ruled 
him, from his early training by his parents till he 
learned the lesson that the just shall live by faith, did 
not and could not yield the fruit of righteousness for 
which he longed. Immediate access to God, reception 
of full and assured forgiveness through Christ by per- 
sonal faith in him, consequent peace of conscience and 
motive-power for a Christ-like benevolence — this was 
Luther's method of righteousness, and one which put 
him at once at variance with the theory of a sacerdo- 
tal church and with its practical discipline. Therefore 
he not merely protested against the proceedings of 
such a scapegrace as Tetzel, not merely nailed his 
theses to the church-door in Wittenberg, not merely 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



87 



appealed to the German nobility against the usurped 
authority of Rome, but also wrote his treatise ' On 
the Freedom of a Christian Man,' proclaiming anew 
the old evangel with which Paul confronted the legal- 
ism of Judaism and the selfish moralities and immo- 
ralities of paganism. No so inspiring a treatise on 
religion or ethics had been written since the age of 
Apostles. Like the profoundest and most quickening 
instructions of sacred Scripture, its form is a paradox: 
" CJiristiamis ho? no oinnium doniinus est liber rinms, nidh 
siibjcctus ; CJiristiamis homo omniimi scrviis est officio- 
sissimiis, omnibus siibjectus'' (A Christian man is the 
freest lord of all things, and subject to no one; a 
Christian man is the most obliging servant of all, and 
subject to all); or, as it runs in his native tongue: 
' Ein Christen mensch ist ein freier Herr iiber alle 
Ding, und Niemand unterthan ; ein Christen mensch 
ist ein dienstbar Knecht aller Ding, und Jederman un- 
terthan.' There is not a wavering line or note in the 
whole march and progress of this tract. The ninety- 
five theses have been aptly described as the cry of an 
oppressed conscience — a cry, it should be added, of 
revolt as well as of anguish. The treatise " On the 
Freedom of a Christian Man" is a song of peace, a 
paean of triumph. When we think of Luther at Erfurt, 
fainting in terror as the consecrated elements were 
borne about, dismayed before a crucifix, writhing on 
the ground as a story of Jesus' mercy is read from a 
Gospel, and then turn to the pages of this treatise, the 
contrast is overwhelming. It is more than the anti- 
thesis of slavery and liberty ; it is the freedom of a 
soul — calm, natural, full of life and strength, breathing 



88 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

its native air, wielding the powers of an inalienable 
sovereignty. The outcome of a faith which imme- 
diately unites the soul to God in Christ is a royal, a 
God-like love. Service to our fellows, however severe, 
disturbs no inward peace. Rather it becomes the 
form and expression of the highest freedom. Myco- 
nius saw in the little, rude cloister-church in which 
Luther first preached the principles of the Reforma- 
tion, a resemblance to the manger of Bethlehem. It 
is not too much to say that through Luther, Christ was, 
as it were, again born into the world. And it is in 
this coming again into the world of human thought 
and life of its Redeemer and Lord, that modern his- 
tory, in all that is most inspiring and encouraging, in 
all that is most nobly characteristic, finds its source 
and living impulse. As a new century of this history 
opens, Luther still witnesses, and with increasing power, 
to the liberty of the Gospel as against every form of 
legalism, to the majesty and glory of Christ as revealed 
in his condescending love, to the worth of the indi- 
vidual soul, to the source of its righteousness and the 
victory of faith." — Christian Uition, Nov. 8, 1883. 

F. N. ZABRISKIE, 

Dutch Reformed. 

** Luther's sweet contentment with his worldly con- 
dition — a hard one at best, but rendered far more so 
by his conscientious independence and his generous 
regard for others — and his tender thoughts of thank- 
fulness to God for every little gift of His providence, 
were constant and beautiful traits of his character. He 



/- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES, 89 

would sit down to his frugal table, and his heart would 
overflow with gratitude which could not be limited to 
the formal '* blessing." He seemed to enter into God's 
own joy in giving him these things. On one occasion 
when they were all enjoying their dessert of fruit 
and nuts, he broke out : ' What do you think the 
great God in heaven says to our sitting here con- 
suming His gifts? Why, He created them for this 
very purpose. And all He asks of us is that we enjoy 
them, with gratitude and genuine acknowledgment of 
them as His gifts.' At another time he calls attention 
to the fact that God's very lavish bestowal of gifts is 
apt to deaden us to their appreciation ; whereas, ' if 
we were all born with one leg or foot, and only in our 
seventh year received the second leg, at fourteen one 
hand, and at twenty the other, we might recognize 
more the worth of the gifts for a time withheld, and 
more thankful' :¥ ^ ^ ^ ^^ 

' If ever a man was called to be what Bunyan st^des 
a Greatheart, it was this 'little monk' who led his 
age against the supreme powers of the world, the 
papacy, the empire, and the devil. * Therefore we 
must not wonder to find his writings and reported con- 
versations bristling with sword-thrusts in the hearts 
of the King's enemies. His favorite Psalm was the 
Second. * I love it,' he said, ' with all my heart. It 
strikes and flashes valiantly amongst kings, princes, 
counsellors and judges.' \^ But Luther's sword was a 
double-edged one, and was as sharp against a godless 
world as against a corrupt Church, against rationalism 
as against superstition. jThe world, in his eyes, is ex- 
ceedingly ungodly and wicked, and few will be saved. 



90 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



If left to himself, man * would willingly throw our 
Lord God out at the window.' Christ would give to 
the world the kingdom of heaven, but they will have 
the kingdom of earth, and here they part. He had 
little patience with the attempt to weigh God or His 
Word in the scales of the human understanding. 
Quoting St. Augustine's reply to the question, * Where 
was God before heaven was created?' — viz: that He 
was in Himself — he says : * When another asked me 
the same question, I retorted, He was building hell for 
such idle, presumptuous, frivolous and inquisitive 

spirits as you !' 

*| "All this, of course, was but one side of the man. 
He was naturally as gentle and as genial as a child, 
and as true a Greatheart in conducting and comfort- 
ing his flock as in fighting their foes. It was the 
result of a passionate devotion to truth, hardly paral- 
leled in the history of man. This was the key to all 
his words and acts, and that which made him the iron 

^aTrdjanconquerable champion of a free Gospel that he 
was. He was no whit less stern in dealing with his 
own heart. He was as brave in bearing the cross, as 
in brandishing the sword. ' I bear upon me the 
malice of the world, the hatred of the Emperor, the 
pope, and all their retinue. Well, on in God's name! 
Seeing I am come into the lists, I will fight it out.'^ 
Nothing ever bowed his heart except the possibility 
of not being in the way of truth and duty, ^he devil, 
he says, would sometimes tempt him with the thought 
that he might be wrong ' till the sour sweat drizzled 
off' him. But when assured of being right he was 
unconcerned and full of cheer, though sick of body 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. ^I 

and worn out of mind, and overwhelmed with care all 
his later years. ' When I write against the Pope, I 
am not melancholy, but fight with joyfijl courage.' 
*I have -set Christ and the Pope at odds; though I 
get between the door and hinges and be squeezed, it 
is no matter; Christ will go through!' Other men 
had witnessed against the defects of popery, but * to 
this I am called : I take the goose by the neck and 
set the knife to its throat.' He did not reproach 
others who went not so far as he. ' Not all can bear 
tribulations alike; some are better able to bear a blow 
of the devil — as we three, Philip Melanchthon, John 
Calvin, and myself But nowhere is the innermost 
spirit of this man — his terrific struggle with his own 
weakness, his sense of overwhelming responsibility, his 
indomitable fidelity, his sublime trust in God — more 
impressively exhibited than in the marvellous prayer 
which he was overheard to utter during the Diet of 
Worms. Summon before you the situation — this one 
man against the world — and I think I am not irreverent 
in saying that nothing has been equal to it since 
Qethsemane. 

" 'Almighty, Everlasting God, how terrible this 
world is! How it would open its jaws to devour me. 
And how weak is my trust in thee! Oh, thou my 
God, help me against all the wisdom of this world.i 
Do thou the work; it is thine, not mine. I have noth- 
ing to bring me here. I have no controversy to main- 
tain — not I — with the great ones of the earth. I, too, 
would fain that my days should glide along, happy and 
calm. V^ut the cause is thine. It is righteous; it is 
eternal./ Oh, Lord, help me! — thou that art faithful, 



92 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



f 



thoui that art unchangeable! It is not in any man I 
trusti I O, God, my God, dost thou not hear me? Art 
thou dead? No, thou art hiding thyself O, Lord my 
God, where art thou? Come, Come!) Thou hast 
chosen me for this work ! I know it. ^O, then, arise 
and work! Be thou on my side, for the sake of thy 
beloved Son, Jesus Christ, who is my defence, my 
shield, and my fortress, f I am ready — ready to forsake 
life for thy truth — patient as a lamb. Though the 
world should be full of demons; though my body 
should be stretched on the rack, cut into pieces, con- 
sumed to ashes — the soul is thine. For this I have the 
assurance of thy Word. Amen. O, God, help thou 
me. Amen . . . (and then, as if in soliloquy) Amen, 
Amen — that means. Yes, Yes, this shall be done!'" — 
Christian Intelligencer^ Nov. 7 and 14. 

J. T. HEADLEY, 

Noted as a Historian and voluminous Writer. 

" Luther was born for action. He was one of those 
determined spirits that are at home in strife and dan- 
ger; opposition and rage steadied him. For a long 
time held in bondage, not from fear of men, but because 
he could not find the truth, he no sooner discovered it 
and announced himself its champion, than he became 
a different man. Instead of the menial monk, school- 
ing his iron nature into slavish submission, he is the 
bold reformer, shaking the pillars of empire. *''* * 
Luther's courage had a firmer basis than his own 
will — it rested on truth. 

""With one thus anchored, and who has no thought 
or wish beyond the truth, the common motives that 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. g^, 

sway men have no influence. He has nothing to do 
with compromises, diplomacy, or results. The word 
of the living God is ever before him, reducing mon- 
archs and dignitaries to the level of the meanest sub- 
ject, while no consequences can be so awful as the 
wrath of the Almighty. Here was the secret of 
Luther's strength. * * * >k * 

"However men may differ respecting Luther's 
views, or the mode he took on many occasions to ac- 
complish his ends, all acknowledge him to be an hon- 
est man and a true Christian. Whether we behold 
him stretched on the floor of his cloister, struggling 
for deliverance from spiritual bondage, or unfolding 
the truths of the Bible to listening thousands; whether 
we see him on his way to danger and perhaps death, 
composing and singing, * Eine feste B urg ist unser 
Gott ;' or listen to his thrilling prayer for help, or hear 
his deep 'Amen,' at the Diet of Worms, we feel that 
we look upon a man whom no bribery can corrupt, 
nor flattery seduce, no opposition overcome or cause 
to waver from the truth." — Headlefs Luther and 
Cromwell. 

WILLIAM G. T. SHEDD, 

Union Theological Seminary, New York. 

" Luther's mission and function was a practical rather 
than a scientific one, and we do not find his mind 
strongly interested in any portion of human science. * 
* * As Luther did undoubtedly, in his inmost soul, 
completely submit his reason to that divine revelation, 
whose normal authority over the church and tradition 
he was such a mighty instrument of restoring; so in 



94 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



\ 



his sober judgment he did recognize the importance 
of a true and proper science of theology, and of a true 
and proper science of the human mind, to be employed 
in building it up out of the matter of revelation." — 
A History of Christian Doctrine, See ''Philosophy of 
Reformers I' p. 90. 

T. DE WITT TALM AGE. 

" It seemed to be a matter of no importance that 
Martin Luther found a Bible in the monastery ; but as 
he opened that Bible and the brass lids fell back, they 
jarred everything from the Vatican to the farthest con- 
vent in Germany, and the rustling of the wormed 
leaves was the sound of the wings of the Angel of the 
Reformation." 

JOHN W. NEVIN, 
Of German Reformed Theological Seminaiy, Lancaster, Pa. 

"To understand the Lutheran Reformation, it is 
necessary, first of all, to understand Luther himself. 
As the great genius of the movement, he was, in one 
sense, the product and birth of the general historical 
force which was comprehended in it. So it is, we are 
often told, with all grand movements in the history of 
humanity. They create in a certain sense their own or- 
gans, the representative men by whose agency they are 
brought to pass. But the individual significance of 
such men, their personal weight as independent forces 
in what has taken place, is none the less to be ac- 
knowledged for this reason. So Luther stands before 
us as himself the germ and pattern of the new order of 
life he served to introduce into the Christian world 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



95 



* * * * Luther himself, of course, had no con- 
ception of his own character or work, in becoming thus 
the organ of the German Reformation. There w^as no 
forethought or plan in what he did. This unpremedi- 
tated character of the relation in which he stood to 
his work, comes everywhere into view, j ^ -^ -^ 
The whole sense of the Reformation lay in his own 
experience. He had lived himself, with mighty birth- 
struggle, into its utmost principle, and felt the presence 
of it as a new creation in his soul before he became 
unwittingly the organ of God's Spirit for proclaiming 
it, and heralding it to the world at large." — Mercers- 
burg Review oi Km\\, 1868. 

ISAAC A. DORNER, 

Of Berlin University. 

" Luther did not set himself up to be a saint, but he 
became of model, world-historical significance for the 
German mind, and far beyond, by being a man who had 
wrestled to find inward peace and direct communion 
with God, and had not wrestled in vain. Having thus 
gone through conflict and victory in his own spirit, he 
committed his experiences, with eloquent faith, to the 
heart of his people, and so won among them the place 
of a competent and trustworthy leader in things per- 
taining to eternal salvation. True, he is a hero of the 
German national spirit, whose image even yet is of 
magical force for all circles, high or low; but not by 
his natural individuality as such, nor yet by his word 
as doctrine merely, has he made himself so enduringly 
felt; the secret of his power lies in all that served to 
form him to the type of an Apostolic disciple, and to 



96 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



an example, we will not say of the Christian life gen- 
erally, but of conscious personal Christianity advanced 
to the ripeness of manhood — above all, in his clear, 
free apprehension of the way of salvation through 
Christ. His faith it was, emphatically, that gave him 



strength." 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 



"Luther's hearty and affluent nature sympathized 
with the joyousness of the Christian spirit which did 
not scorn the flowers of the field, and found Solomon 
less royally arrayed than the wild rose and the lily. 

" None of the traditional external characteristics of 
the Puritan are associated with Luther. He attacks 
the common enemy not with austere severity, but with 
cheerful vigor. His healthy soul was resolved with 
Charles Wesley that the devil should not have all the 
good tunes. The sunshine with which God bathed 
the world, should shine into his heart and be reflected 
in his life. And he who began the continuous organ- 
ized movement of Protestantism, remains to this day 
the most comprehensive and satisfactory type of its 
spirit — a purifying and elevating, but not ascetic force, 
rich in all human sympathies and affections, as in all 
divine aspirations; a lover of children and of sweet and 
simple pleasures, of flowers and harmless sport; whose, 
voice rings down to us through the four centuries since 
his birth, now in hearty laughter at a merry jest, now in 
the soft strain of a sacred song. Luther's name is the 
synonym of jubilant strength, of cheery health, of 
unquailing courage. The pioneer of the spiritual 
emancipation of the modern world, his simple child- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. gy 

hood but resistless faith and energy, hke Goldsmith's 
village pastor, 'allured to brighter worlds and led the 
way.'" — Harper's Montlily, December, 1883. 

A. CLEVELAND COXE, 

Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in his speech on " National 
Perpetuity," at Roseland Park, Woodstock, Conn., July 4, 1883. 

" Luther sounded his tremendous trumpet, and 
waked such echoes as were never heard before from 
the Wartburg to the Odenwald, and along the highest 
Alps and Apennines, to the Vatican itself; nay, to the 
world." — Nezv York Independent of July 12, 1883, p. 
6 (870). 



^ 



JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, 

A Unitarian. 



" The character of Luther had a mountainous grand- 
eur. When near Mont Blanc you perceive its ragged 
precipices and shapeless ravines : but as you recede, it 
appears to tower higher above its neighboring sum- 
mits, until its features are softened by the intervening 
atmosphere and melted into strange tints and beauti- 
ful shadows, and it stands the object of reverence and 
wonder, one of the most sublime objects in nature, 
and most beautiful creations of God. So stands Lu- 
ther, a hero, growing more and more the mark of 
reverence through succeeding centuries — the real au- 
thor of modern liberty of thought and action, and the 
giant founder of modern civilization and pure religion." 
— ''Religions Epochs of the World,'' p. 256. -^ -«-v 



98 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

J. C. LONG, 

A Baptist. 



" It has been four hundred years since the birth of 
Luther, nearly one-fourth of the whole Christian era. 
The new world was not yet discovered. The Moors 
were yet a power in Spain, and the Turks in Europe. 
Looking backwards from that time, our eyes rest upon 
the old world; looking forwards, all seems new, 
strange, great. The struggles of Catholic and Hugue- 
not, the Thirty Years' War which was to destroy the 
old Germany and make way for the new ; Louis the 
Fourteenth, and his wonderful reign in France ; Oliver 
Cromwell, the English Commonwealth, the English 
Revolution of 1688, the French Revolution, the 
American Revolution, the War between the States, a 
new theology and a new physical world, were all in 
the future. Of all these things, Luther was a part; if 
he had never been, they had never been. There is 
scarcely a spot on earth which has not felt and does 
not now feel his influence. He is a part of the United 
Germany of to-day ; England stirs with the energy of 
his thoughts and spirit; and so does America. He 
went with Carey to India, with Livingstone to the 
heart of Africa. Everywhere, recognized or unrecog- 
nized, he moves among men. He is one of those 
great figures that come to stay and grow: to stalk 
down the ages and answer Here! at every roll-call of 
the centuries. 

" It was Luther's sensitiveness to all the forces of 
his age that made him what he was, and that made 
him different from the great men about him. There 
is a sense in which Leo X. and Erasmus were also 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. qq 

products of their age. That is, each was the product 
of one of the age-forces of the Renaissance. Leo was 
born of the classic spirit, and drew his inspiration from 
art and culture; he was a sort of baptized Maecenas. 
Erasmus was the apostle of learning. He was a critic, 
seeing but not feeling or caring for the antagonisms 
about him. It was different with Luther; he was the 
child not of a part, but of the whole of his age. Leo 
and Erasmus were spectators of the fight; he was in 
the arena, and the world's battle was his battle as well. 
As he had grown up in and out of Germany, as he 
was Germany, his was the only hand that could write 
the ninety-five Theses, and nail them to the chapel- 
door. When he stood before the Diet at Worms, he 
felt, and everybody else felt, that it was not Luther, 
but awakening Germany that was to stand or fall. 
Did anybody feel, or could anybody feel, that there 
was any national or world interest wrapped up in the 
life of Erasmus or Leo. X? 

A PRODUCT, AND A CREATOR. 

"At one time, I was in the habit of saying that 
there are two kinds of great men — those who mold, 
and those who reflect their age ; that is, those in whom 
the feelings and energies and thoughts of the age are, 
as it were, focalized or embodied. I would then have 
assigned Csesar and Augustine and Bacon to the first 
and higher order, and Luther to the second class. A 
closer scrutiny has convinced me that the classification 
is wrong. No man has ever been a leader and molder 
of his age without being part and parcel of it ; and no 
man has ever gathered up within himself the spirit 



lOO TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

and forces of his age, without, at the same time, ex- 
erting a formative influence upon it. By living in 
their age, in every day and hour of it, by breathing its 
breath, and feehng its heart throbs, and seeing its 
needs and seizing its opportunities, they have grown 
and ruled. Thousands stand waiting for opportunities, 
and opportunities come and go without being recog- 
nized at all, or else too late. The man of power does 
not fall to see them. He gathers from straws and 
pebbles and wayside flowers, materials with which to 
build and adorn his fortune. He who sits and dreams 
of greatness will never be great. He who holds his 
present position cheap, except as a stepping-stone to 
something higher, may find it long before he takes 
that higher step. Luther was great, was the master 
spirit of the i6th century, because, indeed, he was 
conscious of all the forces at work about him, but not 
less because he was ever faithful to duty in its hour 
and order. * * * * ;ic * * 

" In saying that Luther followed the suggestions of 
the occasion, I mean no more than that, when the oc- 
casion came, it found the man ready for it. In saying 
that he grew up in, and expressed the feelings and as- 
pirations of his age, I do not mean that the work he 
did was of such a kind that it would have been car- 
ried forward by the age-forces without his aid. I do 
not believe it would. The sixteenth century is the 
only one of all the centuries in which there could 
have been a Luther; but, without Luther, it could not 
have been what it was. The Identity of lightning and 
electricity would have been proved if there had never 
been a Franklin; the safet}'-lamp would have been in- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. iqi 

vented if Sir Humphrey Davy bad never lived; if 
Columbus bad never been born, America would still 
have been discovered. In these cases, many were 
moving together towards an end, and it was only a 
question as to who should reach it first. But if 
Elijah had not rebuked Ahab and overthown the 
priests of Baal, there was no one else to do it. If 
Washington had not achieved American independence, 
it does not appear that any other man of the times 
could have done it. In Luther's day, no one so truly 
as he did saw the Reformation idea, and grasped and 
represented it, and made the world feel that he rep- 
resented it. There was, as far as appeared, abso- 
lutely no one who could do what he did. Now and 
then an age accumulates energy to bring forth a great 
man to meet a great emergency ; but rarely or never 
has any age brought forth more than one. When the 
age brings the opportunity, if at the same time it brings 
no man to seize it, the opportunity passes by, like 
some vagrant comet, and returns no more until another 
cycle is completed. The sixteenth century brought 
an opportunity, and with it a man, and that man was 
Luther." — National Baptist, Nov. 15, 1883. 

HENRY E. JACOBS, 

Norton Professor of Systematic Theology in Phila. Luth. Seminary. 

"But the chief excellence of Luther's work is de- 
rived from the spiritual sense of the translator that so 
quickly and thoroughly penetrated into the meaning 
of the text, and expressed itself with that rare facility 
that is the fruit only of living in the Holy Scriptures. 
This manifests itself, too, in the scrupulous avoidance 



102 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

of the language of the learned, and in the desertion of 
all literal idioms that would obscure the meaning of 
the sacred writers from the common people. In all 
the world, there has never been a book which can 
claim so properly to be a book of the people as 
Luther's Bible. Through it the ancient prophets de- 
scend from the stateliness of oriental imagery, and, 
entering the home of the German peasant, express 
their profound thoughts, without sacrifice of dignity, 
in the language of most tender familiarity. * O Lord,' 
he once said, * what a troublesome and great work it is 
to force the Hebrew writers to speak German ! They 
resist, since they are unwilling to leave their Hebrai- 
city, and to imitate German barbarity.' But the 
charm of the work is, that the German barbarity that 
seemed so insuperable is also completely avoided, and 
we find what is as elegant and eloquent as it is plain 
and simple — the work of a true master, who could 
have produced this result only by a special divine 
assistance, an inspiration, though, of course, of a lower 
and entirely different grade from that of the sacred 
writers themselves. It illustrates Luther's own remark: 
'Translation is a special grace and gift of God.'" 
Bible Society Record, of December 20, 1883. 

S. IRENEUS PRIME, 

Editor N. Y. Observer. 

" What then does the world owe to the man and 
the men who realized the standard of revolution, or- 
ganized the rebellion against the direst despotism, with 
which earth was ever cursed, and led the forces of 
truth and righteousness to victory and independence! 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



103 



"It is estimated that in the year 1500, out of the 
52,000,000 square miles which measure the earth's 
area, the Romish church covered nearly 4,000,000. 
The remainder was held by Pagans and Moham- 
medans. To-day the Romish church is dominant 
over 9,000,000 of square miles, and the Reformation 
principles control the thought of the people on 
14,000,000 of square miles ! And we cannot ade- 
quately estimate the value of that Reformation, without 
taking a careful survey of the moral, intellectual and 
physical condition of the people that dwell on the 
square miles dominated by Romanism and by the 
Reformation. 

" What makes the difference between Spain and 
England? What makes Scotland better than Ireland? 
What makes Germany stronger than France ? What 
has kept Italy in mental and moral debasement, and 
what has infused new life and hope into her since the 
downfall of the pope? What would this Western 
world be to-day, if the church of Rome had not been 
shorn of its strength before its settlement by Euro- 
peans ? What causes the difference in all the elements 
of greatness, and of happiness, between North America 
and South America? Compare Mexico with Ohio, 
and explain the contrast. What has Roman Catholic 
principle done for the legislation of civilization? 
Pagan Rome contributed far more to the just juris- 
prudence of modern nations than Rome did in the 
whole ten centuries while papal wisdom and learning 
were dominant forces in Europe. What but the Re- 
formation has given impulse to letters, to art, to sci- 
ence, to invention, to all that elevates, enriches and 
gladdens mankind? 



104 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

" He is blind who does not see the hand of God in 
history; and in no one event in the whole world's 
history is that mighty omnipotent hand more dis- 
tinctly visible, than in the overthrow of papal power 
and the exaltation of that Protestant priaciple which 
now permeates society, and is filling the earth with 
knowledge and freedom. For this let us acknowledge 
God. The right of every man to think for himself, 
subject only to God — this is the core of the Reforma- 
tion. No other lord of the conscience, no priest be- 
tween the soul and its great high-priest, the eternal 
Son of God, no power to forgive sin but God only; 
these are central truths which Rome denies, and which 
the Reformation made the vital forces to deliver the 
human race from mental and moral slavery. This is a 
victory and the liberty which we celebrate when we 
thank God for the birth and life of Martin Luther. The 
Protestant world will recognize these facts when on 
the continent of Europe, in England and Scotland, and 
all over free America, the tenth day of November, 
1883, is distinguished by meetings, prayers, orations 
and songs of praise, to celebrate the day when a child 
was born who grew to be the master man of the Great 
Reformation. Every Protestant church in Christen- 
dom ought to crowd its gates with thankful songs; 
give glory to God in the highest, and bless his holy 
name." 

REUBEN WEISER, 
Denver, Colorado. 

"We say without fear of successful contradiction 
that the labors of Martin Luther made it possible for 
such a government as ours to exist. The truths that 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



105 



were announced by our fathers in 1776 as 'self evi- 
dent' — that all men are created equal; that they are 
endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights 
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would not 
have been published in Philadelphia, if Luther had not 
first proclaimed them at the Diet of Worms. He was 
the pioneer of human liberty and free government, 
and as such he is fully entitled to the gratitude of all 
who respect the sacred rights of conscience. 

Our Catholic fellow-citizens ought, therefore, not to 
find fault with us for our zeal and enthusiasm in cele- 
brating the 400th birthday of Luther. Let them bring 
out any other man who has done as much for the pro- 
motion of liberty and freedom, and we will most cheer- 
fully join them in doing him honor. But until such a 
character is presented, we will continue to rally around 
the immortal Reformer, and hold him up as the great 
High Priest of human liberty, and one of the greatest 
benefactors the world has ever seen!" 

WM. J. MANN, 

Professor in the Lutheran Theological Seminaiy, Philadelphia, Pa. 

** Indeed he was a very peculiar man, that man Mar- 
tin Luther. Original he was, and like a book of which 
only one copy was printed, and towering up above all 
the houses of the large town, and standing solitary and 
looking down from the majestic height like the spire 
of Strassburg cathedral. They were amazed at this 
phenomenon, at this meteor, unexpectedly marching 
across the horizon and setting the world on fire. They 
were horrified at this German monk, bidding defiance 
to the pope, tnen the ruler of all rulers, the jailor of 
5* 



I06 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

millions upon millions of Christian intellects. I won- 
der not that the pope excommunicated him; that all 
priests execrate him, all Jesuits curse him, all Roman 
Catholics hate him. If I was a Roman Catholic, I 
would hate him too. I could not do otherwise. I 
would see in him simply the Vandal, the destroyer. 
Think of it, what an amount of harm that man has 
done to that holy of holies, that * Holy Church,' 
and how little respect he had for all her authority and 
powers, and glories and titles, and masters and serv- 
ants, and how boldly he came out and said things and 
proclaimed truths that shook the old walls to their 
very foundations, and broke forth like a burning 
volcano, upheaving a whole continent, and sending 
showers of red-hot boulders upon the land all around. 
Was it not as if he was going to turn the world upside 
down? There was not a trace of fear in that man. 
Not a foot of ground had he to love — not one farth- 
ing to gain. The battles of God he had to fight and 
he rejoiced in doing it. God's cause was his cause, 
Christ's honor his honor. The more enemies rose up 
against him, the more he felt like fighting, and gloried 
indeed ' to run a race, like a bridegroom coming out 
of his chamber.' Of course he was no respecter of 
persons. Miserable King Henry, of England, who 
sacrificed life after life to his lust, when he meddled 
even with theology, Luther thought he was simply an 
ass with a crown between his long ears, and this he 
called him before all Europe. And how the monk 
handled the pope ! All Christendom stood aghast at 
the unceremonious way in which he scorned all that 
halo around the ' Holy Father,' and denounced him 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. ^07 

as the very ' Hellish Father.' Whilst his vocabulary 
in this direction was not easily exhausted, he held his 
conscience in serene condition, and there was not a 
shade of self-reproach in him. He had to give men 
and things their right names. Would to God, such a 
man would come in our times ! He felt never happier, 
than when his full indignation would blaze out like a 
bundle of lightnings against that miserable sham under 
the tiara, which shamelessly pushed itself between 
God and his Redeemer. All the upholstering around 
the throne at Rome, could not dim or deceive that 
eagle-eye, divinely enlightened. Luther knew, that 
that self-appointed Vicar of Christ was Christ's worst 
enemy, was the anti-Christ. 

" Do not offer that man a bribe, provided he will 
shut up his mouth and keep the peace. To you it 
may appear expedient: not so to him. He will 
knock you down beyond the hope of resurrection. 
Thousand gold mines will not buy him to say one 
word less than what he thinks ought to be said, be- 
cause God says it. Of course, they accuse him: He 
often was rough in his manners, uncouth in his ways, 
rude in his language. He was so, and so he had to 
be. Let that grand soul be as it is. He had a rough 
bark like an old solid German oak, that raises its ven- 
erable head up to the sky and greets old Sol and 
braves a thousand storms and outlives a long array of 
icy winters. There is solid, hard, tough, sound wood 
behind that rough bark. The mighty roots of that old 
oak go down between the rocks and split them, and 
fathom the unknown depth and drink the hidden 
springs. Thus did Luther strike root down into the 



I08 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

depth of God's word, power of love and eternal truth, 
and drink new life. He stood firm and thundered 
forth his world-shaking words, and in him there was a 
host of heroes. 

" Never was nature more natural, never grace more 
graceful, than in Luther. In him there was not a trace 
of affectation. He gave himself just as he was. No 
man was ever greater. No man did ever care less 
about his greatness than he did. He knew not of a 
seeming, hypocritical humility. He rejoiced in the 
fact that his name was known on earth, in the heavens, 
and even in hell. He undertook to rise against the 
dragon that made the blooming land a desert. With 
the muscles of a Samson he raised the rusty gates of 
the old ecclesiastical fortress. Europe stood in amaze- 
ment at the boldness of this agitator. It was a new 
era that spoke through him. His heart throbbed with 
the pulsations of generations to come. Yet he went 
on in shaking the old and honored establishment and 
uprooting it, as if he were simply doing a duty, totally 
sinking his own self in his work, and being merely a 
hammer in the hands of Providence, to form the crude 
and useless material of the past into the refined, new 
form of the future. 

*' Indeed he was a wonderful man ! Behold him, as 
he comes radiant with joy of victory from the fierce 
battle, throws off his armor, puts his sword in the 
sheath and takes up his harp to sing the praises of the 
God of battles, or lulls with sweetest song his dear 
little children to sleep, or plays like a child with those 
dear ones and tells them of the golden apples and of 
the diamond crowns in God's eternal and better home. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 109 

Mark him, as he shoots his fiery arrows in holy indig- 
nation at those who touch the honor and glory of his 
God, or sits majestically in judgment against those 
who, with their own soul-destroying inventions, deny 
the saving power of Christ. But now you see him 
bending his knees, humbly bowing down before Him 
who alone is great, stretching out his hands, raising 
up his arms, pouring out his soul to the great God, 
that He would have mercy on him and His people and 
His church on earth and send forth His mighty Word 
and Spirit and break the power of Satan and comfort 
with sweetest love His dearly bought children, and 
make the light break forth from darkness. 

" Revolutions change the relations between men, 
upset political establishments, and from a new starting 
point produce a new division of this world's hon- 
ors, powers, rights and possessions. A Reformation 
changes the relations of men to their God. No task 
is more difficult than to bring about a change in a 
single individual's religious persuasion and habits. 
Luther caused a vast radical change in the religious 
feelings, convictions, habits, and interests of uncounted 
millions. He found the lost foundation-stone of the 
Church, and with a giant's arms he put the old struc- 
ture upon it. In him, a new star rose up on the can- 
opy of the heavens, to guide us with its brilliant rays 
through the stormy sea of time to the happy shores of 
eternity, to bask in the light of the Sun of Righteous- 
ness. To the radiancy of that star, this day and com- 
ing centuries will give new lustre." — Workman, Pitts- 
burgh, Pa., Nov. 10, 1883. 



no 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



R. HEBER NEWTON, 

Episcopal Rector, New York City. 

" It is a rarely rich personality on which the gaze 
of Protestantism is fixed at this time — a sturdy peas- 
ant's son, who makes himself the friend of princes and 
a worthy foe for the two proudest potentates of civili- 
zation ; a classical scholar and philosophic lecturer 
whose spiritual experiences convulsed Europe; a man 
of large affairs who so translated the Bible that his 
version became a standard of idiomatic German ; an 
eager controversialist, and a writer of hymns as sweet 
as ' Fairest Lord Jesus; ' a world-reformer who sends 
to his little Johnny that inimitable letter about * the 
beautiful garden ; ' a saint who was the jolliest of com- 
panions, and whose burly humor rolls through his 
letters to his * Rib Kate,' and bursts forth boisterously 
amid the most solemn discussions. 

" Wholesome the renewed study of such a powerful 
personality must prove to our generation, gone daft 
upon the idea of impersonality; wholesome alike in 
the culture of individual character, in the fashioning 
of a philosophy of history and of a philosophy of 
nature — another and a deeper matter than science. 
Such a study cannot fail also to give us the key to the 
religious movement of which he was the masterful 
leader. As in other historic instances, the person of 
the Founder of Protestantism holds the norm of the 
religion he inspired; and an understanding of his spirit 
will interpret the nature and destiny of the mighty 
movement he initiated. The Genius of Luther is the 
Genius of Protestantism. Catholicism will have it that 
Protestantism is a spirit of destructiveness. Was 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES, HI 

Luther a destructive ? He certainly did have consid- 
erable puliing-down to do, and he did such work, as 
all else that he set his hand to, heartily ; but his life 
reveals a thoroughly conservative nature, which shrank 
instinctively from all excess; from the ecclesiastical 
extreme of Carlstadt, from the theological extreme of 
Zwingli, and from the social extreme of the Anabap- 
tists. An iconoclast when any venerable image was 
crumbling to pieces and threatening ruin upon those 
who stood below it worshipfuUy, he took nothing out 
of the old temple that he thought could stand safely. 
He was, writes one of his biographers concerning his 
action in establishing the reformed worship, ' as usu- 
ally, conservative.' He believed himself to be doing 
a real piece of conserving. He surely was as truly a 
conserver as the architect who, to save an old minster, 
tears down and rebuilds the walls that were settling 
rapidly, and were threatening total destruction to the 
venerable pile. He was not ' the spirit that denieth,' 
as pictured by his fellow German. He was, in his 
way, an * everlasting yea ' His voice gave new affir- 
mation to faith; an affirmation which rings still 
through the soul of Protestant Christendom, waken- 
ing the echoes of belief. * * * * »♦ — 7;^^ Critic, 
Nov. 10, 1883. 

JAMES A. FROUDE, 

The eminent English historian, depicts the memorable scene at 
Worms in the following words : 

" The appearance of Luther before the Diet on this 
occasion is one of the finest, perhaps it is the very 
finest, scene in human history. Many a man has en- 



112 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

countered death bravely for a cause which he knows 
to be just, when he is sustained by the sympathy of 
thousands, of whom he was at the moment the cham- 
pion and representative. But it is one thing to suffer 
and another to encounter, face to face and single- 
handed, the array of spiritual and temporal authorities 
which are ruling supreme. Luther's very cause was 
yet unshaped and undetermined, and the minds of 
those who had admired and followed him were hang- 
ing in suspense upon the issue of this trial. High- 
placed men of noble birth are sustained by pride of 
blood and ancestry, and the sense that they are the 
equals of those whom they defy. At Worms there was 
on one side a solitary, low-born peasant monk, and 
on the other the dreaded power which had broken the 
spirit of kings and emperors — sustained and person- 
ally supported by the Imperial Majesty itself and the 
assembled princes of Germany, before whom the poor 
peasantry had been taught to tremble as beings of 
another nature from themselves. Well might George 
of Freundsberg say that no knight among them all 
had ever faced a peril which could equal this. The 
victory was won. The wavering hearts took courage. 
The Evangelical revolt spread like an epidemic. The 
papacy was like an idol, powerful only as long as it 
was feared. Luther had thrown his spear at it, and 
the enchantment was broken. The idol was but 
painted wood, which men and boys might now mock 
and gibe at. Never again had Charles another chance 
of crushing the Reformation." 

" Luther's mind was literally w^orld-wide : his eyes 
were forever observant of what was round him. At a 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



113 



time when science was scarcely out of its shell, Luther 
had observed nature with the liveliest curiosity. He 
had anticipated by mere genius the generative func- 
tions of flowers. Human nature he had studied like a 
dramatist. His memory was a museum of historical 
information, of anecdotes of great men, of old German 
literature and song and proverbs. Scarce a subject 
could be spoken of on which he had not thought, and 
on which he had not something remarkable to say. 
His table was always open and amply furnished. 
Melanchthon, Jonas, Lucas Cranach, and other Wit- 
tenberg friends, were constant guests. Great people, 
great lords, great ladies, great learned men, came from 
all parts of Europe. He received them freely at din- 
ner; and, being one of the most copious of talkers, he 
enabled his friends to preserve the most extraordinary 
monument of his acquirements and of his intellectual 
vigor. On reading the TiscJircden, or Table-talk, of 
Luther, one ceases to wonder how this single man 
could change the face of Europe." — On LiitJier s MUid. 
Mr. Froude closes his monograph on Luther as 
follows : " Philosophic historians tell us that Luther 
succeeded because he came in the fullness of time, 
because the age was ripe for him, because forces 
were at work v/hich would have brought about the 
same changes if he had never been born. Some 
changes there might have been, but not the same. 
The forces computable by philosophy can destroy, 
but they cannot create. The false spiritual despotism 
which dominated Europe would have failed from its 
own hollowness. But a lie may perish, and no living 
belief may rise again out of the ruins. A living be- 



114 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

lief can rise only out of a believing soul ; and that any 
faith, any piety, is now alive in Europe, in the Roman 
church itself, whose insolent hypocrisy he humbled into 
shame, is due in large measure to the poor miner's 
son, who was born in a Saxon village four hundred 
years ago." — Contemporary Review. 

W. H. JEFFERS. 

" There were, perhaps, greater theologians than he, 
both among his contemporaries and in the generation 
which succeeded him. There were men of more pro- 
found and accurate scholarship. There were those 
whose talents were no less consecrated to the cause of 
Christ and the promotion of His truth. There were 
men who were not his inferiors in controversial ability. 
But Luther possessed that rare combination and bal- 
ance of qualities which fitted him above all others for 
leadership in the great spiritual movement of the six- 
teenth century. He was eminently a representative of 
the common people, was acquainted with their spirit- 
ual condition, sympathized with them in their wants 
and aspirations, and knew perfectly how to touch their 
hearts and kindle their enthusiasm. In his preaching, 
his tracts, and his translation of the Bible, he availed 
himself of the language of everyday life, and so skill- 
fully did he mould this to his purpose, that the German 
tongue still retains the character which he impressed 
upon it. He aimed always at * the instruction of the 
rude, common man,' rather than the gratification of 
scholarly tastes. He was a man of unflinching cour- 
age. Perils from which others shrunk, served only to 
quicken his energy and rouse his determination. * I 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



115 



hear,' he writes, in concluding one of his treatises, 
'that bulls and other popish devices have been pre- 
pared, in which I am urged to recant or be proclaimed 
a heretic. If that be true, I would have this little book 
serve as part of my recantation.' He was a man of 
untiring industry and singular endurance. It requires 
a good portion of a lifetime simply to read the twenty- 
four quarto volumes which contain his writings; yet 
during the twenty-eight years in which these were 
produced, he was burdened with incessant cares, and 
almost constantly engaged in preaching and teaching. 
Some of his treatises were thrown off hurriedly ; but 
there is evidence that his more important works were 
elaborated with great care. Parts of his translation of 
the Bible were subjected to no less than fifteen careful 
revisions before being sent to the press. In connection 
with these exalted qualities he possessed in singular 
degree the characteristic of humility. It was through 
no craving for personal distinction that he assumed the 
attitude of reformer. He took the first step only when 
compelled, in faithfulness to his charge in Wittenberg, 
to utter his protest against the shameful traffic in in- 
dulgences; and every subsequent step was taken in 
obedience to what he recognized as the voice of con- 
science and the voice of God." — Westminster Teacher^ 
November, 1883. 

O. B. FROTHINGHAM. 

" It is not strange that the birthday of Luther should 
be celebrated in the land of his nativity and the places 
made glorious by his achievement; that new biogra- 
phies of him should be published; that portraits of the 



Il5 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

man should be distributed ; that his books should be 
reprinted; that essays and discoveries by eminent men 
should be given to the public ; that fresh estimates of 
his character and work should be made by distin- 
guished thinkers. The marvel is that the whole 
Protestant world does not indulge in enthusiastic 
encomium of its great founder, does not magnify the 
author of the new dispensation of spiritual liberty in 
faith and worship. For this is his significance as a 
historical character — this is his conceded position 
among Protestant believers. The people commemo- 
rate persons, not principles. They like concrete real- 
ities; they crave personal contact; they must have 
flesh and blood ; a little dirt, a rank smell, a coarse 
fibre, a touch of vulgarity, is to their taste ; overmuch 
delicacy, refinement, sensibility, scholarship, critical 
nicety, repels them. Nature itself seems to abhor an 
excess of cultivation. We cannot breathe pure oxy-' 
gen, or drink unadulterated spirits, or eat ethereal food. 
Even ignorance, stolidity, mental inertia and spiritual 
short-sightedness, are sheaths that preserve the sword 
of the Spirit from rust, prevent its wounding the wrong 
person; in a word, keep its activity within limits. It 
may be quite true that the same results would have 
been attained had Luther never been born. The drift- 
ing vessel may in course of time reach the same goal 
with the steamship, but it will be much longer about 
it, and it will pursue a devious track, with frequent 
stoppages, with retrograde motions, with incessant in- 
terruptions from winds and currents. The steamship 
has all the winds inside, disregards the eddies, ploughs 
a straight furrow, goes steadily forward, arrives quickly 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



117 



and surely at its destination, uses the elements which 
keep the sail-boat back, while it takes advantage of 
every favorable circumstance of time and tide. But 
then, the steamship has its inconveniences. There is 
the noise of machinery, the forced action of the boat 
against the waves, the unyielding pressure of mechan- 
ical agency, the heat of the furnace, the smell of oil, 
the din of stokers shovelling coal or discharging ashes, 
the nuisance of cinders, the danger of fire, the risk of 
explosion, the peril of collision. The general elec- 
tricity of the earth does not dispense with telegraph 
wires or render magnets valueless. Without it they 
could lend no service, but without tJieni it certainly 
would not perform the tasks that man requires. So 
Luther might have been nothing without his age, but 
what would that have been without Luther ? In him 
the tendencies of the generation, the ^ elements which 
were abroad in the XVIth Century, came to a head, 
culminated as personal power. * * * * 

— Luther was a rough, rude man, with all his, genius 
and all his gentleness — a wholesale, terrestrial man ; 
and to this roughness, rudeness, earthiness, his victory 
was due. To this was owing the warmth of his 
sympathy, the heartiness of his humor, the native force 
of his spoken and written thought, the racy heartiness 
of his scholarship, and his homely rendering of the 
Scriptures into the language of popular speech — even 
his courage so largely made up of indomitable wil- 
fulness, and his tenderness, so full of simply human 
emotion. His love of music was homespun and plain 
— not soaring or seraphic. He was a child of the soil. 
He lived near the ground. He thought in masses. He 



Il8 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

felt broadly and naturally. Religious he was by na- 
ture and by education, but his religion — the parent of 
modern naturalism — was of the untutored heart, the 
untrained impulse, the impassioned instinct. His 
marriage, the motives that led to it, the circumstances 
that attended it, the domestic happiness that resulted 
from it, all declare what manner of man he was — an 
honest, downright, stubborn, cordial, rustic man, mus- 
cular and brave, with blood in his veins, capable of 
getting mad, and of enjoying practical jokes. His 
furious rage against the Anabaptists at Miinster, as 
well as against all who would carry his principles to 
extremes, shows how little addicted he was to formal 
logic — how ready he was to consult the dictates of 
common sense. 

" Providence mingles a good deal of alloy with the 
fine gold of which the characters are wrought that are 
to make a broad mark on the world. Emerson, in his 
famous lecture on Napoleon I., whom he ranks among 
Representative Men, speaks of the terrible drawbacks 
on his moral disposition, which made possible his ex- 
traordinary achievement. But Emerson himself, one 
of the cleanest, most seraphic men that ever lived, fails 
to make a great popular impression on his time, by 
veason of his fineness and purity. He wielded a 
different weapon, was what Napoleon would have 
called an 'ideologist.' His influence may be more 
lasting; but it is influence, the effect of the highest 
genius on the best minds. Theodore Parker owed his 
astonishing power less to his vast reading, his capa- 
cious memory, his immense industry, than to his practi- 
cal talent, his ability to state current thoughts in pic- 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



119 



turesque language, his sympathy with the ruHng in- 
terests of his day and nation. His friend George 
Ripley was in some respects a more extraordinary 
man, of nicer critical faculty, or more evenly balanced 
intellect, but few comparatively ever heard of him. 
Melanchthon was, on the whole, a finer intellect than 
Luther ; but he is scarcely more than a name, while 
Luther is a leader of multitudes. We hardly ever 
hear of Melanchthon except as Luther's opposite, and 
to his disparagement. He would, in fact, be quite 
forgotten but for his relation to the great reformer, 
who clove his way to the goal while the other was 
considering the difficulties that beset the path. What 
kind of a reformer would Montaigne have made, or 
any skeptic ? A distinguished minister once said that 
he should have done something as a writer if his 
hands had been less delicate. He was too fastidious 
of touch to grasp tools by the handle. He shrank 
from contact with labor. The 'cast of thought' is 
'pale;' it 'sicklies o'er' the objects it contemplates. 

Luther was not separated from his fellow-men, or 
lifted above them by any accident of fortune or dispo- 
sition. He was destitute of private ambition to lead a 
movement, establish an institution, build up a family, 
or sit upon a spiritual eminence. He was homely in 
his tastes, unpretending in his manners, plain in his 
whole exterior. Probably no man could have been 
more surprised at his fame than he, for he neither 
sought it nor gave thought to it. He did not desire 
money. He lived and died poor. While others made 
gain from his writings, he made none. He was con- 
tent with a humble lot, happy in his wife and children, 



120 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

honest of speech and conversation. His great task of 
translating the Bible was undertaken with simple fidel- 
ity to human wants; its prime excellence of speech 
was simply due to his determination to be intelligible 
to ordinaiy people, not to any affectation of plainness 
of style as a beauty in itself He was not conscious 
that he was engaged on an immortal work, nor did 
he plume himself on his ability to render Hebrew 
and Greek into idiomatic German. In truth, he 
plumed himself on nothing that he had or was. * * 
" The real genius of Protestantism is not now under 
debate. Be the decision what it may, one thing is 
certain, that the character of Martin Luther is no fail- 
ure; that the more closely it is studied the more hon- 
orable it will appear ; that years will but add to its 
intrinsic nobleness. He was a living soul, and none 
but living souls rule in the spiritual world. Humility, 
simplicity, sincerity, unconsciousness, obedience, faith, 
command the future. It is safe to predict, moreover, 
that his ultimate thought, though altered in expression, 
will rule over philosophy as long as Christian Theism 
with its endeavor after communion with God through 
Christ, is professed among men. The Protestant idea 
will ever be associated with his name, though inter- 
pretations may change and expositions may vary. 
Protestantism and Martin Luther are synonymous 
terms." — The Critic, November lO, 1883. 

EDWARD LeM. HEYDECKER, 

Of New York City. 

" The nations of Europe which have accepted Luth- 
er's principles and embodied them in their public 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



121 



acts — Germany, England, and the United States, the 
greater nations ; Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, and 
Denmark, the smaller ones — stand foremost in the 
world in political, social and moral development; while 
the nations where Loyola's influence has been strongest, 
Spain and Portugal, are the last in the list of European 
nations, if we exclude Turkey, which is not Christian. 
The Jesuit influence is strong in South America, 
and those nations are the laggards in the march of 
progress. 

The principles of Luther — the principles of Free- 
dom, Truth and Justice — have won their way over the 
despotism of rulers and the prejudices of aristocracy, 
and have won the grand results which modern histo- 
rians record. 

Luther's influence on men is uplifting, ennobling, 
calling forth all the higher qualities of man's nature ; 
the influence of Loyola's teaching is to call into play 
man's baser passions, to excuse and defend his vices 
and crimes, and to make him a mere creature, obedi- 
ent to his master, the pope. The spirits of these men 
still live and teach, and the end is not yet. 

* O ! vos qui cum Jesu ites, 
Non ite cum Jesuites.' " 

— Lutheran Quarterly, Oct., 1883. 

GEORGE P. FISHER, 

Professor of Church Ilistoiy in Yale Divinity School. 

"Luther emancipated himself from the legal and 
ascetic conception of religion. He attained to the free- 
dom of the children of God. He came to look on this 
6 



122 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

world, not as an abode of gloom, a place of exile, 
but as a temporary residence of man, given by his 
Heavenly Father — a residence not wanting in beauty 
and attraction, though it be only the vestibule of a 
higher state of being. In his broad sympathy with 
man as a denizen of this world — sympathy with the 
avocations, the diversions, the social institutions, of 
this mundane existence, all of which are to be leav- 
ened by the spirit of religion — he showed that he had 
advanced beyond the point of view of the mediaeval 
saint. 

" The largeness of Luther's mind is evinced in the 
blending in him of the spirit of freedom and of faith. 
The Rationalist looks to Luther as to his intellectual 
father. He was a pioneer in the practical assertion of 
mental liberty. But along with this courage of intel- 
lect, there was a profound spiritual life, so that by the 
side of him, the Rationalist is seen to be but half a 
man. 

" What is it in Luther that, after four hundred years 
are gone, stirs the heart of the Protestant nations ? It 
is not any one quality by itself It is not any single 
function that he exercised — as that of theologian, 
teacher, author, translator. It is the man behind all. 
It IS the great heart and the great mind, united to- 
gether. He had very conspicuous faults. But, after 
all, most of the assaults upon him are like blaming a 
pillar for being of the Doric order and not of the more 
graceful Corinthian style. Whoever visits Great Head 
on Mount Desert Island, does not look for a cliff of 
polished marble. He is satisfied with the massive 
crag which lifts itself on high, against whose rugged 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



123 



side the angry waves have spent their strength in 
vain." — New York Critic, Nov. 10, 1883. 

Again, in an article on " Luther's 400th Birthday," 
he says : 

" Had he done nothing more than to make his trans- 
lation of the Scriptures, it might have been deemed 
enough for one man to do. But this work, costing 
though it did a great amount of toil and of thought, 
was only a fraction of the labor which he performed. 
His catechisms, his sermons, his printed comments on 
portions of Scripture, his spirit-stirring hymns, his 
controversial treatises and tracts, productions, all of 
them, called out by the exigencies of the time, and 
most effective for their ends, constitute a copious liter- 
ature. Well does he deserve the exalted rank which 
he holds among the leaders of men. No man ever 
had reason to doubt his profound sincerity. No man 
ever did seriously question his courage. His intellec- 
tual power has been fully conceded by the ablest of 
his adversaries. The depth of his piety is evident to 
all who study his writings and his conduct, with minds 
free from sectarian prejudice." — Congregationalist, Nov. 
8, 1883. 

Again, on Luther's translation of the Bible: 

" Of all Luther's gifts to the German people, his 
translation of the Bible is, no doubt, the most valuable. 
In nothing are the resources of his intellect and the 
vigor of his character more manifest than in his abil- 
ity, in the midst of literary w^arfare with a hundred 
antagonists, to undertake most important works of a 
positive character, involving a great amount of thought 
and toil, for the upbuilding of the Church. 



124 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

The translation of the Bible cost him a world of 
labor. He recognized the necessity of taking counsel 
in such work. Besides the regular help of Melanch- 
thon, Jonas, and his other coadjutors, he would discuss 
words and phrases at his own table, with his friends 
and guests who happened to be with him. Imbued 
himself with the vernacular of the people, he still did 
not neglect to inquire of common men, in cases where 
he was doubtful, as to the right term to be chosen, or 
as to the precise significance of a popular phrase. For 
he meant to make a translation which should come 
home to the understanding and heart of the common 
man. It should be a German Bible that he would 
give to the people. Not that he undervalued accu- 
racy; he claimed that in cases where precision was 
necessary he had secured it, sparing no outlay of 
thought and inquiry to achieve this end. 

" Still, he was determined to issue, not a colorless 
version, or a version enervated by idiomatic peculiari- 
ties of the Hebrew and Greek, or a pedantic version, 
intelligible and interesting only to the cultivated, but 
rather a translation which should make the Bible ap- 
pear to have been written in German. He gives some 
amusing accounts of the struggle it cost him to make 
the sacred writers ' speak German.' In dealing with 
Job, especially, his patience was well nigh exhausted. 
No one could understand what it had cost him to 
make Job ' rede7i Deutsche but he succeeded. In his 
version the apostles and prophets * reden Deutsck — the 
Deutsch of the shop, the market and the hearth-stone. 

" Luther's Bible is a living book. The juicy lan- 
guage of Luther's version, its sinewy vigor, its racy 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



125 



idioms and the rythmical charms which it has in com- 
mon with the authorized EngHsh version, are Hterary 
merits which it is impossible to estimate too highly." 
— Century, October, 1883. 

VICTOR L. CONRAD, 

Of the Lutheran Observer. 

" There is not an interest or reform affecting human 
welfare in modern civilization — whether educational, 
social, industrial or political — upon which Luther did 
not shed the light of his great intellect and soul, en- 
lightened by the Word and Spirit of God, He taught 
that it was the duty of the state to educate all the 
children of the people, in order that they might become 
intelligent and useful citizens; and thus he was the 
pioneer advocate of universal education nearly four 
hundred years ago. In quelling the outbreak of com- 
munism in Germany, known as * The Peasants' War,' 
he declared it to be the duty of all to be subject to 
'the powers that be,' and to acquire property, not by 
the plunder and robbery of others, but by industry, 
frugality and honesty. In an address to the princes 
and nobles of Germany, he taught the reciprocal duties 
of rulers to their subjects and of subjects to their 
rulers, suggesting the fundamental principle that gov- 
ernments, though ' ordained of God,' ' derive their 
just powers from the consent of the governed.' 

*' Thus the genius and inspiration of the Monk of 
Wittenberg furnished the germ truths or principles of 
all true reforms in church and state, in government 
and society, that make up the Christian civilization of 
the present day." — Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine^ 
November, 1883. 



126 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

WILBERFORCE NEVIN. 

"Summoned by the Emperor to answer for his ob- 
duracy at the imperial council at Worms, the priest 
(Luther) in bold defiance of even his friends, set out 
and confronted secular and sacerdotal majesty in the 
form of the Emperor and the Pope. Paul before 
Agrippa, John before Herod, Joseph before Pharaoh, 
Daniel before Belshazzar, were supported by superna- 
tural aid. But Luther, a man in all that is human, in 
heart and brain only above these conditions, confronted 
the packed Diet, and ' God helping ' him, refuted 
bluntly and triumphantly the imposing paradoxes, 
whose only strength was in the blades of the empire 
and the militant church. We call men great, and set 
forth their puny doings in red-wrought eulogiums. 
We exhaust the vocabularies of praise to deify the 
sordid deeds of military captains ; we celebrate events 
by long-continued ecstacies of national self abandon- 
ment and popular delirium. But what are all of these 
that have passed during four hundred years compared 
to the courage, devotion and inspiration of this poor 
monk, arming himself by alms and rejecting the king- 
doms of the princes of the world because he read 
aright — knew that he read arigl.l — the mystical key to 
the Word that abides." — Phila. Press, Oct. 31, 1882. 

CHARLES ADAMS. 
" A great name is that of Luther — a name to be car- 
ried down the generations, and which will be conspic- 
uous forever. Let us, out of multitudes, gather up 
a few precious sayings of this great name, that the 
young and the struggling, and the irresolute and the 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



127 



desponding, as well as the more sanguine and aspiring, 
may review them and catch inspiration as they medi- 
tate, and rally strength as they inwardly digest." — 
Words that Shook the World. 

J. J. VON OOSTERZEE, 

Refonned Church of Holland, 

" Who would not gladly have seen and heard this 
preacher, with the true German head and the overflow- 
ing Christian heart, when he first appeared in a little 
chapel, which would accommodate hardly twenty per- 
sons, presently to become by his powerful word, for 
thirty years in succession, a source of blessing to 
millions ? " — Practical Theology, p. 117. 

GEORGE SMEATON, 

Free Church of Scotland, 

" Luther's treatise in reply to Erasmus, bearing the 
title De Servo Arbitrio, undoubtedly one of the most 
powerful treatises ever written on the subject on which 
it treats, overthrows the open Pelagianism of Erasmus, 
who knew little of theology, and the semi-Pelagianism 
of men less extreme in their opinions than Erasmus. 
* * * Almost the only thing that one regrets 
about this noble production is not its vehemence, 
which was the natural utterance of the writer, nor the 
strong statements about man being under the power 
of Satan, nor the representation of the will as re- 
sembling the motionless inaction or immobility of a 
stock or stone; for these, though lamented by some, 
will not appear extravagant exaggerations to one en- 
lightened as Luther was — but the title of the book." 



128 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

MRS. ELIZABETH R. CHARLES. 
" He brought over some of the best old hymns into 
the new worship, not word by word, in the ferry-boat 
of a hteral translation, but entire and living, like Israel 
through the Jordan, when the priests' feet, bearing the 
ark, swept back the waters." — Christian Life in Song^ 
p. 222. 

EPHRAIM MILLER, 

Lutheran pastor, Shrewsbury, Pa. 

" No one possessed a kindlier nature than Luther. 
With all the craggy ruggedness of his character, with 
all the stormy elements of his spirit, his heart over- 
flowed with the gentlest affections. He was one of 
the most brotherly of men. No man ever touched all 
humanity at a greater number of sides. So large- 
hearted was he that he had room for all the strong 
affections of humanity, and all the weak ones too. So 
many-sided was he, that nothing human failed to inter- 
est or attract him. So broad and deep and lively 
were his sympathies, that nothing good or strong, 
joyful or sorrowful, appealed to him in vain. If he 
was a man of strong intellect, he was a man of equally 
strong sensibility. If his courage and decision were 
so manly that he could not be moved by personal 
dangers, yet was his heart so womanly, that he was 
easily moved by the sorrows of others. If he cared 
little for his own misfortunes, yet his heart bled for 
the calamities of his country. So that if there was an 
assailable side in this many-sided man, it must be 
sought in the region of his emotional nature." 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 129 

Speaking of the spirit that animated Luther in the 
Marburg Conference as none other than that of pure 
and conscientious Christian love, the author continues : 

" If there were Hghtnings and thunderings and hail 
and fiery tempest in his speech, if his movements 
sometimes were the movements of the storm-cloud 
or the billowy tumult of the ocean, if he sometimes 
resembled the volcano pouring down streams of molten 
wrath, yet over them all was spread the warm sun- 
shine of a fervid Christian love. And it was precisely 
that love that generated his stormiest discourse. Are 
not the wildest winds, as well as the gentlest zephyr, 
the cyclone and the evening breeze, alike the children 
of the sun? Is it not the sun that lets loose the 
lightnings? Is it not the sun that silently lifts the 
vapors of the sea upwards, and then pours them in 
torrents and floods and snows and hail over the land ? 
Is it not the sun, the genial sun, that converts the 
quiet air into a desolating force, rending the abodes 
of man in its uncontrollable march ? So it was the 
strength and fervor of Luther's love, that imparted 
such annihilating energy to his words, when he was 
dealing with those who maintained any of the many 
forms of error that set themselves up against the work 
of the Lord. It was the same love that led him to 
submit to the greatest hardships, and face the greatest 
dangers for the truth, and that impelled him to make 
his most deadly onslaught on the enemies of the truth. 
It was the same love that animated him with a calm 
heroism at the Diet of Worms, and that sustained 
him with a circumspect decision at Marburg. With 
out such love, Luther could never have been the Re- 
6* 



130 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



former that he was, never would the multitudes have 
followed him as they did, never could he have thrilled 
the heart of Europe as he did in his day, and as he 
has continued to thrill that heart through so many 
years even down to the present, when America joins 
Europe in commemorating the work of this man of 
God and man of the people, the man who loved the 
people, and whom in turn the people loved and de- 
lighted to honor." — Liciherau Quarterly, Jan. 1884, 
pp.134, 144. 

SCHAFF-HERZOG ENCYCLOPEDIA. 

" Luther stands forth as the great national hero of 
the German people and the ideal of German life. Per- 
haps no other cultivated nation has a hero who so 
completely expresses the national ideal. King Arthur 
comes, perhaps, nearest to Luther amongst the English- 
speaking races. He was great in his private life as 
well as in his public career. His home is the ideal of 
cheerfulness and song. He was great in thought and 
great in action. He was a severe student, yet skilled 
in the knowledge of men. He was humble in the 
recollections of the designs and power of a personal 
Satan, yet bold and defiant, in the midst of all perils. 
He could beard the papacy and imperial Councils, yet 
he fell trustingly before the Cross. He was never 
weary, and there seemed to be no limit to his creative 
energy. Thus Luther stands before the German peo- 
ple as the type of German chdracter. Goethe, Fred- 
erick the Great, and all others in this regard, pale 
before the German Reformer. He embodies in his 
single person the boldness of the battle-field, the song 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 131 

of the musician, the joy and care of the parent, the 
skill of the writer, the force of the orator, and the sin- 
cerity of rugged manhood, with the humility of the 
Christian. * ^ * < Ein' Feste Burg,' is 

Luther in song. It is pitched in the very key of the 
man. Rugged and majestic, trustful in God, and con- 
fident, it was the defiant trumpet-blast of the Reforma- 
tion, speaking out to the powers in the earth and under 
the earth, an all-conquering conviction of divine voca- 
tion and empowerment." — Vol. II. Conclusion of Ar- 
ticle on Luther. 

McCLINTOCK AND STRONG'S CYCLOPEDIA OF 
BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIAS- 
TICAL LITERATURE. {Dr. C. P. Kraiith.) 

" The Character of Luther lies so open in his life 
that it is hardly necessary to trace its lines. He was 
so ingenuous that, if all the world had conspired to 
cover up his faults, his own hand would have uncov- 
ered them. His violence was that of a mighty nature, 
strong in conviction, waging the battle of truth against 
implacable foes. The expressions which jar upon the 
refined ear of the modern world were natural in a 
rough era, and from the lips of one who was too pure 
to be prudish. The coarsenesses of the mendicant life 
can hardly fail to leave their traces on any man who 
has been subjected to them — the tain: of a system in 
which filthiness is next to godliness, or rather is a part 
of it. The inconsistencies charged upon Luther's 
thinking are those of a man of great intuitions, who 
grows perpetually, and who will not stop for the hope- 
less and useless task of harmonizine with the crudities 



1^2 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

of yesterday the ripeness of to-day. His widest diver- 
sities, after the sap of the Reformation began to swell 
in his veins, are like those of the tree which bends 
with mellow fruit of autumn, careless of consistency 
with its first buddings in the cold rains of March. 
That Luther was unselfish, earnest, honest, inflexibly 
brave in danger, full of tenderness and humanity, the 
ideal of Germanic strength and Germanic goodness; 
that he was one of the great creative spirits of the race, 
mighty in word and deed, matchless as a popular ora- 
tor, one of the very people, yet a prince among princes, 
a child of faith, a child of God — this is admitted by all. 
" There is scarcely another instance in history in 
which an individual, without secular authority or mili- 
tary achievement, has so stamped himself upon a peo- 
ple, and made himself to so great an extent the leader, 
the representative, the voice of the nation. He has 
been to Germany what Homer was to Greece. * He 
was the only Protestant reformer,' says Bayard Tay- 
lor, * whose heart was as large as his brain.' * * * 
His physical life was largely one of suffering. His 
habits were abstemious, and his enjoyments at the 
table were social, not epicurean. His voice was not 
loud nor strong. Melanchthon's happy phrase touch- 
ing Luther's words is, that they were ' fulmina,' not 
'tonitrua' — it was their lightning, not their thunder, 
by which their mighty effects were produced. The 
papal system, the upas of the ages, which they struck, 
is not dead, but it is riven and blasted from its crown 
to its root." — Vol. v., p. 569. 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES. 



133 



THE LIBRARY OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE. 

" Luther's character presents an imposing combi- 
nation of great quahties. Endowed with broad human 
sympathies, massive energ}^, manly and affectionate 
simplicity, and rich, if sometimes coarse humor, he is 
at the same time, a spiritual genius. His intuitions of 
divine truth were bold, vivid and penetrating, if not 
comprehensive ; and he possessed the art which God 
alone gives to the finer and abler spirits that he calls 
to do special w^ork in this world, of kindling other 
souls with the fire of his own convictions, and awaken- 
ing them to a higher consciousness of religion and 
duty. He was a leader of men, therefore, and a 
reformer in the highest sense. His powers were fitted 
to his appointed task; it was a task of Titanic magni- 
tude, and he was a Titan in intellectual robustness and 
moral strength and courage. It was only the divine 
energy which swayed him, and of which he recog- 
nized himself the organ, that could have accomplished 
what he did. Reckoned as a mere theologian, there 
are others w^ho take higher rank. There is a lack of 
patient thoughtfulness and philosophical temper in his 
doctrinal discussions ; but the absence of these very 
qualities gave wings to his bold, if sometimes crude 
conceptions, and enabled him to triumph in the strug- 
gle for life or death in which he was encfacred. '^ "^ 
Upon the whole, it may be said that history presents 
few greater characters — few that excite at once more 
love and admiration, and in which w^e see tenderness, 
humor, and a certain picturesque grace and poetic 
sensibility more happily combine with a lofty and 



134 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

magnanimous, if sometimes rugged sublimity." — Art. 
" Luther," Vol. IX. p. 243; see also article " Bible.". 

REES' ENCYCLOPEDIA. 

" Luther introduced, not into Germany only, but 
into the world, a new and most important era ; and his 
name can never be forgotten, while anything of prin- 
ciple remains that is deserving of remembrance." — 
American edition, Philadelphia, vol. xxii. 

THE CYCLOPEDIA OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIF- 
FUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. 

" Luther ranks high among German writers for the 
vigor of his style, and the development which he im- 
parted to his vernacular language. Schroeck, Melanch- 
thon. and others, have written biographies of Luther, 
and Michelet has extracted a kind of autobiography 
from his works. From these passages the character 
of Luther is clearly deduced, for there was no calcu- 
lation, reserve or hypocrisy about him. He was frank 
and vehement, and often intemperate. But he was 
earnest in his vehemence; he really felt the importance 
of the topics he was discussing; and whether he was 
right or wrong in his peculiar opinions, he was a sin- 
cere and zealous believer in the Christian Revelation. 
Luther considered religion as the most important of 
man, and because he considered it as such, he wished 
to ascend to its very source, unalloyed by human 
authority. He contended for the right of every man 
to consult the great book of the Christian Law. The 
principles of free inquiry, which he introduced, led to 
further results, and gradually established that liberty 



SCHOLARS' TRIBUTES, 13^ 

of conscience which now exists in the Protestant 
States of Europe. But Luther, himself, whilst he ap- 
pealed to the Scriptures against human authority, did 
not for a moment admit of any doubts concerning the 
truth of Revelation. * * * Those who 
judge of Luther's disposition merely from his contro- 
versial style and manner, greatly mistake his character. 
He was a warm-hearted German, kind and generous ; 
he abused and vilified his antagonists the more in pro- 
portion as they were powerful; but he could feel for 
the unhappy, and he even tendered some consolation 
to his bitterest enemy, Tetzel, when, forsaken by his 
employers and upbraided as the cause of all the mis- 
chief, he was in the agonies of death and despair. 
Luther gave that impulse towards spiritual philosophy, 
that thirst for information, that logical exercise of the 
mind, which have made the Germans the most gener- 
ally instructed and the most intellectual people in 
Europe. Luther was convinced of the necessity of 
education, as auxiliary to religion and morality; and 
he pleaded unceasingly for the education of the labor- 
ing classes, broadly telling princes and rulers how 
dangerous, as well as unjust, it was to keep their 
subjects in ignorance and degradation. He was no 
courtly flatterer; he spoke in favor of the poor, the 
humble and the oppressed, and against the high and 
mighty, even of his own party, who were guilty of 
cupidity and oppression. Luther's doctrine was alto- 
gether in favor of civil liberty, and in Germany it 
tended to support constitutional rights against the en- 
croachments of the imperial power. Luther's moral 
courage, his undaunted firmness, his strong conviction, 



136 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



and the great revolution which he effected in society, 
place him in the first rank of historical characters.- 
The form of the monk of Wittenberg, emerging from 
the receding gloom of the Middle Ages, appears 
towering above the sovereigns and warriors, states- 
men and divines, of the sixteenth century, who were 
his contemporaries, his antagonists, or his disciples." 
— Vol. xiii.,pp. 206, 207. (London, 1839). 

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 
" Nothing can be more edifying than the scene pre- 
sented by the last days of Luther, of which we ha\'e 
the most authentic accounts. When dying he col- 
lected his last strength, and offered up the following 
prayer: ' Heavenly Father, eternal, merciful God, thou 
hast revealed to me Thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Him I have taught. Him I have confessed, 
Him I love as my Saviour and Redeemer, whom the 
wicked persecute, dishonor, and reprove. Take my 
poor soul up to Thee.' Then two of his friends put 
to him the solemn question: 'Reverend Father, do 
you die in Christ and in the doctrine you have con- 
stantly preached ?' He answered by an audible and 
joyful* Yes;' and repeating the verse: "Father, into 
Thy hands I commend my spirit,' he expired peace- 
fully."— Vol. XV., p. 84. 



PAI^T II. 

WHAT THE RELIGIOUS PRESS HAS EDI- 
TORIALLY SAID OF LUTHER THIS 
MEMORIAL YEAR. 



LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG. 

Inscribed to the Printing Press In this 400th Year of the Reformer's Birth. 
BY JOEL SWARTZ, D. D. 

At Wartburg still the ink they show 

"Which Luther at the Devil threw. 
In these last days we've learned to know 

He fought more wisely than he knew. 

For this far more than flaming tongue 
Filled popes and devils with affright : 

The inkstand by the printer flung 
Has put the Prince of hell to flight. 

Now silent lies great Luther's tongue, 

And palsied is the hero's hand; 
But that black thunder-bolt it flung 

Still rolls and smites from land to land. 

The martyr's stake and prison cell, 
The tyrant's yoke and scourger's rod. 

And other enginery of hell, 

It smites as with the wrath of God. 

E'en where consenting captives lay 

In Superstition's ghostly halls. 
This bolt has thrown the light of day 

Between the thunder-riven walls. 

With Argus eyes, Briarean hands. 

And myriad tongues to curse or bless, 

There walks the earth's enlightened lands 
One king of all — the Printing-press. 

His royal form is wrought of steel ; 

His spirit is the steam's hot breath ; 
Before him Power and Genius kneel ; 

His smile is life, his frown is death. 
(139) 



140 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

The harnessed lightnings are his steeds; 

His hands are on the curbing wires; 
Each courser every whisper heeds, 

And checks or loosens all his fires. 

His hand is on the telephone ; 

The light electric burns his path • 
He speaks his thought from zone to zone 

In tones of love or peals of wrath. 

If sometimes with a backward fling 

He smites when he should help instead. 

Yet mainly aims this noblest king 
His inkstand at the Devil's head. 

His Wartburgs crown a million hills ; 

The walls are all of paper made ; 
His ink, which countless measures fills. 

Is on these walls most deftly laid. 

And whether by his hot breath blown. 
Or seized with all his hundred hands, 

The whole around the world is thrown, 
To bless and brighten all its lands. 

King of the inky sceptre, hail ! 

We own thy sway, court thy control ; 
Thy power shall more and more prevail 

Until it spread from pole to pole ! 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



THE NEW YORK INDEPENDENT, 
Rev. W. H. Ward, D. D., Editor, in its issue of November 8. 

"Throughout this month the churches and coun- 
tries of Protestant Christendom celebrate the comple- 
tion of the fourth century since the birth of Martin 
Luther. It would be easy to say much about that 
grand, masterful, passionate, simple, heroic reformer; 
but it is not necessary. Christendom is his monu- 
ment; for Christendom is now predominantly Protest- 
ant. It has accepted his interpretation of Christianity. 
The Roman Church, which, when Luther climbed the 
sacred stairway on his knees, was imperial and imperi- 
ous, has lost its supremacy never to regain it. The 
mighty independence of private judgment and personal 
conscience, asserted against all dictation of Pope or 
Council, cannot but make manhood such as must rule. 
A man has a bigger will-force when he thinks out for 
himself what is right than when he depends on some- 
body else to decide for him what is right. History 
has passed its verdict on Luther's theses; and that 
irreversible verdict is giving the world to the aggres- 
sive, liberty-loving Protestantism of Luther, which de- 
pends on nothing less and submits to nothing less than 
God and his word. Protestant Christendom is his 
monument, with its vigor, earnestness and faith. 

( 141 ) 



142 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



Roman Catholic Christendom is his monument, with 
its decay, impotence and unbeHef. 

"Luther was not a perfect man; certainly he was 
not a man of gentle speech. But what of that? He 
had rough work to do, and a great deal of it. So he 
went about swinging an iron flail, fighting with a 
giant's strength and some of a giant's rudeness. But 
who dares rebuke him? Certainly not those who 
remember what was Tetzel, and what the court of Leo 
X. If he had a voice of thunder, it was raised against 
corruption and oppression. He had a very gentle 
voice and a very tender German heart for his own 
home, and for those who were seeking for the truth. 

" Not least ought our Roman Catholic friends, if 
they cannot join in this celebration of Luther's memory, 
to give it the tribute of respectful silence. The Catho- 
lic Church is a vastly better Church than it was when 
Luther was thundering against it; all intelligent 
Catholics know that. And they cannot fail to see that 
Luther's moral nerve is in a great measure the cause. 
The Catholic Church has not disdained to learn some- 
thing from its enemy. Nowhere is that Church so 
worthy of respect as where Luther's influence has been 
most felt. So let us all, with uncovered heads, pass 
before the monument of the man who led Europe out 
of the darkness of the Middle Ages into the civilization 
of modern times. He was greater than poets or 
emperors, as religion is higher than literature or gov- 
ernment. His monument — it is all about us; it is in 
us." 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. I43 

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, 
Rev. S. Ireneus Prime, D. D., editor, in its issue of Nov. i. 

" Luther rises before us out of the dark and level of 
his times like some great mountain, sky-piercing and 
rock-ribbed, yet whose slopes are clad with woods and 
grain fields and orchards, fed with rushing streams and 
bright cascades from invisible heights; with a back- 
ground of radiant and prophetic sunrises and sunsets; 
reposing normally in peaceful and tender light, but 
capable of clothing itself in passing shadows, thick and 
stormy vapor, and terrific thunder-clouds ; perhaps 
developing volcanic fires, for the relief of a laboring 
earth and the destruction of polluted Pompeiis and 
Herculaneums. Says Richter : * Luther stood in the 
midst of the electric tempests which he had enkindled, 
and for us cleared and unfolded them into pure air.' 

" It was not as a man of men — one of a thousand — 
that he succeeded, but as a man of God. He says 
himself: ' Obedience, and keeping to the articles of 
war — this is victory.' His was the obedience of faith. 
And * this is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even your faith.' By faith the walls of Rome fell down, 
as well as the walls of Jericho. Luther's ram's-horn 
could not have done it, nor even the Ark w^hich the 
Reformers bore with them. Theirs was the faith 
which is simply the electric response of the human 
to the divine heart and mind and will. They were 
mighty through God to the pulling down of strong- 
holds, because they were men of God. >k * * * 

" In this also consisted Luther's assertion of man 
hood for men. It is a shallow error to claim him as 



144 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

the champion of the mere Liberty, an unqualified and 
universal ' natural right' to independence. This de- 
structive and nihilistic temper is the child of Lucifer, 
and not of Him who is the Light of the World. It was 
not the spirit or dream of Luther, any more than of 
the Puritan and the Netherlander and the Huguenot, 
and all who have built up the towers and bulwarks of 
modern freedom and civilization. There will be a 
great effort this year to claim Luther as the champion 
of an unconditional and even atheistic liberty. Let it 
not be lost sight of that Lutherism stands for Freedom 
in the Tnith, not froin it. His nature, like that of all 
genuine and beneficent radicalism, was essentially and 
intensely conservative. He was the slave of truth, of 
the light as he saw it. He was altogether heliotropic. 
Put him anywhere — in the law school, in the convent, 
in Rome, in Wartburg, at Wittenberg, at Worms, at 
Spires, at Augsburg, and not less in dealing with anar- 
chic revolts of peasant and noble — he always set his 
firm and eager face toward the light, and could not be 
turned aside by fear or favor. To him truth meant ' as 
the truth is in Jesus.' And in him was fulfilled the 
promise, 'The truth shall make you free,' as inter- 
preted by the parallel declaration from the same divine 
lips : ' If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free 
indeed.' i 

"And this it was that made him free from all beside 
— from self-seeking, from the fear of man, from flat 
tery, from bribes, from care for worldly preferment, 
from counting his life dear to himself And this dead- 
ness to the world, in its turn, made him life to the 
world, new life to the church. His freedom from 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES, 



145 



everything but the truth gave him the freedom of that 
Kingdom of Truth, which Christ came to establish on 
earth. As we look back, he is as one standing erect 
and kingly in a den of chained and cowering lions ; or 
as one walking amid a burning, fiery furnace, seven 
times heated, and beside him One like unto the Son 
of God." 

THE CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER, 
Revs. John M. Ferris, D. D., and N. H. Van Arsdale, Editors. 

"Martin Luther was God's man; selected and 
prepared by him for the work which was to be 
accomplished. He was chosen and endowed, pro- 
tected, sustained and prospered, as were Moses, Sam- 
uel, David, Isaiah, Peter, John and Paul. A fulness 
of time had come, and he was called out to introduce 
a new era. The night was far spent, and he was ap- 
pointed by the King to herald the coming of a new 
day — a day of light, of triumph, and of joy. 

" Certain characteristics of this man may be profit- 
ably considered now, when the attention of the world 
is turned upon the Reformer. Is it providential that 
men have been moved to celebrate the birth-day of 
the man after four centuries have passed away? It 
has not been the custom of the Church to observe the 
anniversary of his birth. Why now? What has oc- 
curred to give this present prominence to the great 
Protestant? Does any such event occur that is not 
providential ? Surely, there are lessons to be learned 
from the character and life of Luther that will prepare 
the Church for greater devotion and efficiency. It is 
possible and probable that there are characteristics in 



146 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



this apostle that the Church of this day needs to con- 
sider, to desire and obtain. What was he ? 

"He was heroic, confident, aggressive. His bold- 
ness held his enemies in check. His courage arrested 
and unnerved the arm raised to smite him. His hero- 
ism won admiration and confidence, and led men to 
follow him. The foundation of his courage was faith 
in God, faith in the Word of God as the supreme, in- 
fallible truth. Rome was mighty, had her hand on 
the thrones of Europe. Kings and princes served the 
Papacy because they feared it. Rome had armies, 
money, learning; had possession of the social, politi- 
cal, commercial life of Europe. She ruled in the 
courts, in the universities, on the exchange, in the 
shop, and in the homes of men. Other men had chal- 
lenged her and been destroyed. Excommunication 
meant no trade, no social intercourse, no friendly 
offices; meant poverty, starvation, and death. To 
stand up before, to defy, to assail such a power, de- 
manded a courage such as the world has seldom seen. 
Luther nailing his theses to the church door is the 
incarnation of moral courage. Luther going alone to 
Worms is the perfection of heroism, is a spectacle un- 
surpassed in the world's history. * * * 

" God's man was aggressive. He made the attack, 
did not wait to be attacked. He smote the iniquity 
about him, laid hold upon it, exposed it, condemned 
it in the name of God, gave it no rest, and did not 
wait for it to smite him. His warfare was not defen- 
sive, but aggressive. He invaded the enemy's coun- 
try and subdued it. Has not the Church need to-day 
of this spirit ? Are not many waiting for favorable 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. i^y 

opportunities, for providential indications, so called, 
for invitations from tfee perishing, for iniquity and 
falsehood to bear such fruit that men shall cry out and 
plead for relief? Is not the world ripe for a bold, en- 
ergetic, enthusiastic assault upon delusions and super- 
stitions and worldliness, and all the forms of sin. 

" Luther was not only confident, heroic, aggressive ; 
he was also joyous. God's man was a singing man. 
God selected as the herald of the new bright day a 
man who delighted in song, whose joyous spirit ex- 
pressed itself in song. He was happy, glad, exultant. 
Why not? He was God's son, justified by faith, at 
peace with God, an heir of God, doing God's wofk in 
confident reliance on God's promises, and doing it 
with God's supreme, infallible truth. Why should he 
not be exultant, full of praise ? Why should he not 
go singing on his way ! Why did God select a sing- 
ing man to overturn the thrones of error and sin, and 
bring in the best, the freest, the purest, the brightest, 
the happiest period of the world's history? Was it 
not because it was such a period? It was a period to 
be welcomed and introduced with song. 

" Ought not the Church of to-day to be an exultant, 
happy, joyous Church, filling the air with songs of 
praise and triumph ? What wonderful results have 
followed the Reformation ! What a new world this 
world of ours has become ! How have men been 
divinely endowed in the fulfilment of the exceeding 
great and precious promises ! What poets, what his- 
torians, what statesmen, what merchants, what a host 
of noble men and women, has the Church of the Refor- 
mation had through these four hundred years ! What 



148 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

a host it has now! What a mighty change has been 
wrought! How dark the world was when the cheer- 
ful, joyous, full-toned, confident and exulting voice of 
Luther was first heard proclaiming liberty and life and 
everlasting joy ! How light the world is now! What 
a change has been wrought in governments, in educa- 
tion, in social life, in the comforts and conveniences of 
life, in charities, in provision for the sick and poor and 
unfortunate! How the truth has spread, what con- 
quests it has won, what countless thousands have 
been enlightened, purified, cheered, saved by it! How 
much better the world is than it was four hundred 
years ago ! Ought not the Church to go about its 
work as Luther did, singing, joyous, rejoicing, exult- 
ant, hopeful, praising God and filling the earth with 
thanksgiving ! Why not ?" 

THE CHRISTIAN UNION, 

Rev. Lyman Abbott D. D., Editor, in its issue of Nov. 8. 

" Providence always has some great and masterful 
soul made and developed to meet and master every 
great emergency. As often as society prepares its 
molds, God fills them ; pours himself into them in a 
divine fullness that brings to pass an epoch of history. 
It was pre-eminently so with Martin Luther. He was 
the upheaval of the thought and life of his century ; 
ay, of the thought and life of the preceding centuries. 
He was the child of terrific struggle and conflict — the 
one mighty mind which was the ' whispering gallery' 
of the still, small voices of enslaved spirits, and which 
spoke for freedom, million-tongued, in tones that 
thundered round the world and down the ages. ' His 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. i^q 

mind was made convex, to receive the scattered rays 
of God's sun which had fallen into the souls of men 
during fifteen centuries ; and in him they were ' fo- 
cused' and made to blaze and burn so as to set the 
moral and spiritual heavens aflame with a new life and 
a new hope for humankind. He found his age ' de- 
formed,' and set himself to the task of its reformation. 

" To understand and estimate Luther as a reformer, 
as a mighty spiritual force for all time, we need to note 
the twofold direction and power of the work that was 
wrought — his own spiritual transformation, and the 
transformation that was wrought through him upon 
society. 

" Look at him in his personal struggle for freedom 
and peace of conscience. * >k * >i< Find 
his God he would : if not in the school, then in the 
monastery; if not in the monastery, then at Rome ; if 
not at Rome, then in the depths of his own conscious 
nature, enlightened by the Word of God and quick- 
ened by the Divine Spirit. He fell into the most de- 
pressed state of mind. He cried 'Mary, help!' It 
was not any peculiar transgression, nor youthful ex- 
cess, that filled him with ' dread of the wrath of God,' 
it was his own nature struggling like an imprisoned 
giant to be free. The church, the sacraments, the 
austerities, the fastings — Rome, with all her equip- 
ments — could give him no relief As if God would 
concentrate in one soul the spiritual yearnings of the 
race. He took this man to St. Peter's in Rome, and 
while he was climbing the holy staircase on devout 
knees He put the spirit of the old Apostle into him, 
which broke forth in the speech of divine liberty: 



ISO 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER 



* The just shall live by faith.' After the long and 
dark night, the light broke forth. He stood before 
God emancipated by faith. He came into the glorious 
liberty of a child of God. Gathering up all his ener- 
gies, like a Domingo, he tore off the toils that the 
Papacy had wound round him, and declared that a 

* Christian man is a free master over all things, and 
subject to no one.' The new, inner, spiritual man 
bounded upon the plane where he had conun union 
with God. * God,' he declares, * will not and cannot 
permit any one to rule over the soul but himself 
alone.' * By means of faith he ascended far above 
himself into the divine.' 

" When Luther had fought this great spiritual battle 
for himself, he was prepared to stand up, in the might 
of the old Apostle to the Gentiles, and demand free- 
dom of conscience for all men. He then had that 
divine authority in his own reason which enabled him 
to say to the hierarchs of the imperial Diet at Worms : 
' If I had a thousand heads I would allow them all to 
be cut off rather than recant a single word.' He 
dared to say to prelates and kings, ' Councils have 
often erred,' and 'to act against conscience is unsafe 
and dangerous.' There is nothing in history grander 
than this; and there is nothing that is simpler or more 
natural to such an experience as Luther's. With God 
enthroned in the conscience, what are men, or armies, 
or kings, or popes ? What terror is there in prisons, 
and fagots, and the cross ? When he had refused to 
have his own manhood crushed, he dared to say, and 
he had the authority to say, to the proud, corrupt, and 
enslaving Church of Rome, * You shall not crush the 



EDITORS^ tributes;. 151 

manhood out of my fellow-men' — to say it with an 
authority that tore from the Papal Church one-half of 
her communicants. 

" Luther stands before us as the exponent of true 
Reformation." 

THE NATIONAL BAPTIST, 

Of Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 22. 

"As we review the commemoration of the fourth 
centennial of Luther's birth, we find a good many im- 
pressions left with us as the lessons of the event. For 
one thing, we realize deeply the might and endurance 
of spiritual forces. Here is this man, Martin Luther, 
who held no office, who was poor, who according to 
the prevailing standards of human greatness was a 
very humble man; and yet, because he represented 
spiritual truths and forces, his name awakens un- 
bounded enthusiasm ; millions have risen to do him 
honor ; crowned heads, as well as the masses, have 
been moved to joyful tears at the return of his birth- 
day. Who cares for the birth-day of Charles V., who 
in his day ruled nearly all the continent of Europe, 
wielding a power not paralleled till the days of Napo- 
leon ? Who of their contemporaries would have 
dreamed that the poor obscure son of a miner, the 
simple monk, would in the coming centuries so over- 
shadow the Emperor that the two would hardly be 
named together? How much real enthusiasm could 
be aroused over the birth-day of Columbus, of Michael 
Angelo, of Thomas Aquinas, of Bacon? But this man 
wielded spiritual forces, and spoke to the hearts of 
men, and hence his enduring sway. 



152 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



**And not less to be remembered is the illustration 
of our Lord's saying, * He that loseth his life shall find 
it.' In an age when position, honor, earthly greatness, 
were bestowed by the Church, this man broke with 
the Church. He might, no doubt, have been a Bishop, 
an Archbishop, perhaps a Cardinal, or what not. But 
when he was so rash as to confront and oppose the 
Pope, men must have felt that he was throwing away 
all his chances; he was dooming himself to obscurity. 
And yet, by that very act, he has secured such lasting 
fame, such immortality of gloiy, as no other man of 
his century gained. The Augustine monk towers aloft 
above prelates and popes, like an obelisk in the level 
desert. 

" And as we consider the past and the present of 
Protestantism, we realize something of the falseness 
and the foolishness of the talk about the Decline of 
Protestantism. Four centuries ago, Protestanism had 
not an existence as an organized power. To-day, it 
leads the world. The intelligence, the wealth, the 
force of arms, the morality, the civilization, is with the 
Protestant nations. 

"If we reckon the population of the Protestant 
nations, including Great Britain, America, Germany, 
Scandinavia, Switzerland, Holland, Australia, East 
and West Indies, and the British colonies, it is quite 
within bounds to say that the Protestants number not 
less than 150,000,000. If the line should be drawn, 
and the Protestant nations should be ranged against 
the Catholics, we believe that the Protestant nations 
could buy the Catholic nations out twice over, could 
beat them in war, could outdo them in argument, 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



153 



could show a superiority on any field that might be 
assigned. If this is the failure and decline of Pro- 
testantism, then we can only say that a few more 
centuries of such decline and failure will leave Pro- 
testantism the unquestioned ruler of the world, and 
Romanism only a name in history. 

"The Protestant nations are the only colonizing 
nations. With Protestantism goes liberty of speech, 
of the press, of thought, of worship, an open Bible, the 
morals of the New Testament. We are not aware of 
any really first-class nation which is Romanist, for 
France is far from Romanist. And the Protestant 
nations are growing more Protestant each day ; the 
essential Protestant principles are becoming more 
dominant. On the other hand, the Romanist nations 
are, for the most part, becoming less Romanist ; 
Austria, Italy, are not Romanist as they once were. 

*' The story of Luther reminds us that often, in order 
to a true reform, one must go outside the body which 
is to be reformed. It was by breaking away from 
Rome, that Luther so emancipated himself as to 
inaugurate a reform which has immeasurably benefited 
Rome itself It was by going out of the Anglican 
Church that Wesley awoke that church from its deep 
slumber, and made it a living church. 

" Of course, there are plenty of small men to look 
back on a movement and belittle the greatness needed 
to produce it. It would not be very hard to-day for 
any of us to nail 95 theses, or 195, on a church door, 
if the sexton did not object. It would not be difificult 
to-day to burn a bull of the pope. It is the old story 
of Columbus' Q'g'g over again. 



154 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



" We fully believe that the fourth centennial has 
been a blessing-, recalling the memory of one of the 
noblest characters in history, and making Protestant- 
ism once more conscious of its powers and of its his- 
tory. We believe that the next centennial of Luther 
will find his name and his principles more honored 
and more dominant than ever." 

THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, N. Y., 

Rev. J. M. Buckley, D, D., Editor, in its issue of Nov, 15. 

"His genius was phenomenal; a p et, a linguist, a 
musician, a philosopher, a historian. He was one of 
the fathers of historic ecclesiastical criticism. In in- 
dustry he was a prodigy; his translation of the Bible 
would have been enou";h for a life-time. In courage 
he was unsurpassed. To find parallels of Luther be- 
fore the Legate, the Emperor, and the Diet, we must 
go back to Paul before Felix and Agrippa. Elijah, 
Paul, and Luther, make a trinity of similar moral he- 
roes. Luther's eloquence at times was of the ighest 
order, his zeal equaled that of Peter; and he was a 
statesman as well as a theologian. In the work of the 
Reformation he was led on from step to step, and 
wonderfully protected by Divine Providence. 

" By no means perfect, he was a great and good 
man, a * chosen vessel' for the work he accomplished, 
as really as David was when Samuel called him. His 
end was peace. January, 1546, he went to Eisleben 
on a work of reconciliation, preached four times in bad 
weather, caught cold, and died February 18. When 
dying he prayed thus: 'Heavenly Father — eternal, 
merciful God — thou hast revealed to me thy dear Son, 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 155 

our Lord Jesus Christ. Him have I taught Him 
have I confessed. Him I love as my Saviour and 
Redeemer, whom the wicked persecute, dishonor, and 
reprove. Take my poor soul up to thee.' 

**The Romanists are much disturbed at the honors 
now paid him. Some of their papers call him a luna- 
tic, a blasphemer, a wretch. Since Luther fought the 
battle of civil and religious liberty for us and all men, 
we have no disposition to do more than give them this 
passage from John Bunyan; whom also, doubtless, 
they consider to be a wretch, a blasphemer, and a 
lunatic. 

"'Now I saw in my dream that at the end of this 
valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of 
men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly; 
and while I was musing what should be the reason, I 
espied a little before mxC a cave, where two giants, 
Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old time; by whose power 
and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes, etc., 
lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place 
Christian went without much danger, whereat I some- 
what wondered ; but I have learned since, that Pagan 
has been dead many a day; and as for the other, 
though he be yet alive, he is, by reason of age, and 
also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in 
his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his 
joints that he can now do little more than sit in his 
cave's mouth, grinning at the pilgrims as they go by, 
and biting his nails because he cannot come at them, 

"'So I saw that Christian went on his way ; yet, at 
the sight of the old man that sat in the mouth of the 
cave, he could not tell what to think, especially be- 



1^6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

cause he spake to him, though he could not go after 
him, saying, "You will never mend till more of you be 
burned." But he held his peace, and set a good face 
on it, and so went by and catched no hurt' 

" Not one in the long catalogue of their popes, nor 
any man since St. Paul, ever exerted as great a moral 
and intellectual force as Luther; and so long as the 
world stands, the principles for which he contended 
will be maintained." 

LUTHERAN STANDARD, 

Edited by the Faculty of Capital University, Columbus, Ohio, 
November lo, 1S83. 

" Luther was a man that well deserves to be called 
great. Some men are called so without sufficient rea- 
son; but he was truly great in intellect, in heart, and 
in deed. His mental endowments were extraordinary, 
and he used them well in the acquirement of knowl- 
edge. He was genial and generous and true-hearted. 
His labors for the welfare of man were many and val- 
uable. As instances may be mentioned his noble 
translation of the Bible into the German, and the prepa- 
ration of his incomparable Catechisms. His literary 
labors were such as to secure for him a high place 
among the greatest authors. But that whi'ch renders 
him conspicuous above all other men, was his work of 
restoring the Gospel to men and thus reforming the 
Church. To this all his labors tended, in this they all 
concentrated. He was the great Reformer, and we 
who enjoy the fruits of his reformator}' work thank 
God for the grea'. gift of this truly great man — all the 
more great because so unconscious of his greatness." 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. ^tn 

November 24th it says : 

" How little is to be found against the great Re- 
former, Dr. Martin Luther, is evinced by the great 
efforts and small success of the Romanists to find 
something in history that would prove damaging to 
his noble character. A man so frank and honest 
might be expected to say and do things which ill-will 
would use for his disparagement; but that the most 
pronounced hatred of the man can find so little with 
which to reproach him, must tend to raise him still 
higher in the esteem of right-thinking men. Romanists 
hurl vile epithets at him, it is true; but when they try 
to furnish any ground for their abuse they must resort 
to such silly proofs as that he once spoke reverently 
of the pope, and therefore was inconsistent when he 
afterwards made attacks upon him, and that he once 
took upon himself monastic vows and subsequently 
spoke with contempt of the whole business of monk- 
ery, wherefore he must have been a bad man. Why, 
it is true that Luther was once a papist as benighted 
as any other subject of the papal power, and that by 
the grace of God he was led to the glorious light of 
the Gospel, and ceased to be a papist. Romanists 
seem to forget that if he had remained a devotee of 
the pope he never would have been the great Reformer 
whose praise all the world is singing." 

THE NEW YORK EVANGELIST, 

Henry M. Field, editor, 

Notices the 400th anniversary of Luther's birth in the 
following abridged editorial of its issue of November 

8,1883: 



158 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



" On the tenth of November we celebrate the four 
hundredth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther, 
the man raised up by the divine hand to be the mas- 
ter spirit of the modern world. Athanasius, Augus- 
tine and Luther, are the names which stand out before 
all others in Christian history, to mark the epochs of 
its advancement since the apostolic age. The Refor- 
mation burst forth at the same time in independent 
movements in England, France and Switzerland, as 
well as in Germany, yet they were all influenced and 
determined to a great degree by the mightier move- 
ment which sprang from Luther, and were shaped by 
his masterly influence. 

''The Church had assumed the place of God, and 
presumed to control men in faith, worship, and con- 
duct. Luther broke through the obstructing Church 
to find God. He forced his way through the masses 
of traditional dogma and ecclesiastical institutions and 
ranks of authoritative priests, and gained the presence 
of his Saviour, and learned from God himself the rule 
of faith, of worship, and of conduct. This was the 
Reformation at its core. 

** It is the unique position of Luther that he was 
made the providential specimen and miniature of the 
entire reform. He fought the Reformation through in 
his own self before he fought it out as the chieftain of 
the nations. Luther was born of sturdy German peas- 
ants. He was honest and brave from the cradle to the 
grave. The battle of the law with sin was waged in 
his inner man. A second Paul in self-disciphne, he 
learned the vanity of human righteousness, and was 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



159 



constrained to cast himself without reserve on the 
mercy of God. His apprehension of the divine grace 
of forgiveness was hfe from the dead. A vital princi- 
ple from God took possession of him and mastered 
him. It was the principle that made him the master 
of the Reformation when the supreme hour arrived." 

THE ILLUSTRATED CHRISTIAN WEEKLY, 

Published by the American Tract Society, under the editorial manage- 
ment of Rev. O. A, Kingsbury, in its issue of Nov. 10. 

"Two things, we think, stand out with especial 
prominence in the history of the great Reformer — the 
man; the truth which he preached. 

" There was the man. Luther's was a grand person- 
ality. As Dorner says of him : * He is one of those 
great historical figures in which whole nations recog- 
nize their own type.' And as the Roman Catholic, 
Dollinger, says of him : ' It was Luther's overpowering 
greatness of mind and marvelous many-sidedness 
which made him to be the man of his time and of his 
people.' We naturally associate the work that was 
done in striking off the bonds of the Papacy with the 
man Luther. He rises preeminent among the men of 
his time as a great character. It was, most certainly, 
the truth which he proclaimed which broke shackles 
and brought in spiritual liberty. But in the good 
ordering of the divine Providence there was a man be- 
hind the truth, a man whose whole being was possessed 
by the truth. Men saw the truth, as it were, incarnate 
in one of their fellows. They felt the power of the 
rugged nature of the man. Dr. Martin was no carpet- 
knight. He was a warrior whose blade fell with grim 



l5o TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

and terrible earnestness at every stroke. Granted that 
he was vehement and rough and uncouth. It needed 
a man whose nature was composed of the elemental 
powers to awake a slumbering nation and make spir- 
itual freemen out of the slaves of superstition. The 
zephyr is very pleasant, but there is need sometimes 
of the tempest to clear the atmosphere of murky 
miasms, 

" There was this tremendous personality in Luther, 
because in part of natural endowment, and also because 
of his deep experience of the truth that saves. God 
raises up such servants as He needs for His special 
work. As has been well said, ' Men do not make times, 
any more than times make men; but there is a soil in 
the ages, continually husbanded by divine Providence, 
from which grow in their seasons the progressive 
harvests of humanity.' The man, Luther, in his rugged 
and strong nature, was of God's providential making. 
Then upon this nature was superinduced the power of 
the truth experienced. He had felt the sting and tor- 
ment of sin. Church, pope, ceremonies, penances, had 
brought no relief But faith had brought the sense 
and assurance of pardon. Henceforth this naturally 
strong nature was clothed with the ' power of an end- 
less life.' He was a man on fire with the love of 
Christ. But it was a man who was nailing up theses 
against indulgences, and burning pope's bulls, and de- 
fying cardinals and councils, and translating the Scrip- 
tures, and preaching and writing and teaching; and the 
man moved with tremendous weight. 

"This man had a message — 'The just shall live by 
faith.' It had brought peace to his own soul. It fired 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. y6\ 

his zeal, it nen^ed his arm, it sustained his courage. 
This truth, brought into prominence, broke fetters and 
set souls free. It was the truth that men needed. 
The church had wandered from it. Superstitions had 
overlaid it. In the rubbish that the hierarchy had for 
long ages been piling upon it, it had become hidden 
out of sight Brought once again into view, it showed 
men the way to God, each for himself It was the 
divinely-revealed truth that the way of salvation is not 
through sacraments or orders or priests ; that however 
helpful these may be when rightly used, they are 
simply impertinent when they stand in the place of 
simple individual trust in Jesus Christ. * * *" 

THE EVANGELICAL MESSENGER, 

Cleveland, Ohio, chief organ of the Evangelical Association, in its 
issue of November 13. 

" Martin Luther was a mighty man of faith, worthy 
to be enrolled among the ancient heroes on the shining 
muster-roll of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. He, 
too, 'through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge 
of the sword, out of weakness was made strong, waxed 
valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the 
aliens.' He went through Gethsemane agonies up to 
his sublime victories. He fought and conquered on 
his knees. On one occasion, in the darkest period of 
the Reformation, after a season of supplication in his 
closet, Luther came out into the presence of his family, 
with shining face and uplifted eyes, exclaiming, * We 
have overcome ! We have overcome ! ' It was God's 



1 62 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

answer to the soul of the suppliant — the prophecy and 
token of the great victory to come out of the long 
struggles of the ages in the noon-day of the nineteenth 
century. 

" At this distance of nearly four hundred years from 
that supreme and awful crisis of Luther's life at the 
Diet of Worms, we are still permitted to hear the 
echoes of that wonderful prayer, through whose 
travail of anguish the great Reformer climbed up, on 
his knees, to the sublime, serene height of one of the 
grandest moral triumphs of human history. It was 
one of the darkest hours of his life. God's face seemed 
for the moment to be veiled : his faith was under an 
awful strain; his soul was tossed to and fro like a ship 
in a furious storm ; and * he threw himself with his 
face upon the earth, and uttered those broken cries 
which we cannot understand, without entering in 
thought into the anguish of those deeps from whence 
they rose to God.* 

" In that thrilling scene, in the city of Worms, on 
the 1 8th of April, 1521, and in the immeasurable re- 
sults of the accomplished Reformation in all lands, 
behold God's answer to Martin Luther's prayer! * * 
He gave himself to God in loyal devotion, and God 
used him. He was a pen, a trumpet, a light, a sword, 
in the hand of the Lord. The glory of his character 
and deeds belongs to God, and the fruits belong to us 
and our children. To God we will be thankful for his 
gift to the world and to us, for 'all things are ours; 
whether Paul, or ApoUos, or Cephas, or Luther, or 
the world, or life, or death, or things present, or thi ig.s 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 1 5^ 

to come; all are ours, and we are Christ's and Christ 
vs God's.' " 

THE RELIGIOUS TELESCOPE, 

Of Dayton, Ohio, main organ of the Church of United Brethren in 
Christ, J. W. Hott, Editor. 

" Martin Luther belongs to all ages. His spirit and 
thought and life projected into the following centuries. 
Luther honored manhood when breaking away from 
the dogma of the papacy. He laid aside the monastic 
dress in 1524, and in 1525 married Catharine von 
Bora. Ten months a prisoner at Wartburg, he left 
the prison in March, 1522, and soon issued his trans- 
lation of the New Testament. Twelve years later the 
Old Testament, translated into the German language, 
was given to the world. The beauty and forcefulness 
of the language in Luther's German Bible almost made 
the German language. His literary labors, as well as 
his public preaching, were of a most important char- 
acter — hundreds of works issued from his pen, many 
of them small, to be sure, but adapted to the times and 
necessities of the Reformation. 

" To Luther the Christian world owes more than to 
any man who has lived since the days of the Apostle 
Paul. He belongs to all churches, and the fruit of his 
toil to the ages. He is the father of Protestantism, 
the Nestor of free thought, and the uplifted hand 
which holds an open Bible before the gaze of the 
world. 

" The celebration of the four hundredth anniversary 
of the birth of Martin Luther ought result in great 
good. He was not perfect, but his virtues and char- 



164 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



acter, rising above the horizon of his times so full- 
orbed, presents a scene which we all need a thousand 
times to gaze upon. 

" We need a revival of the spirit of Luther. His 
supreme devotion to the word of God is an example 
to be followed in our times. His heroism and cour- 
age are great needs of this day. Luther does not 
need to live over again. So profound, so undisguised, 
so transparent, so fired with enthusiasm, en tJicos^ God 
in him, that his life flows down through all Christen- 
dom. He belongs to the nineteenth century as cer- 
tainly as he did to the sixteenth. 

" We hope our preachers will take advantage of 
this occasion to discourse upon the character and 
fruits of the Reformation. A better appreciation of 
the blessings of our day, and a feeling and act of fuller 
consecration to Christ, should be the results of such 
meditation. No one of us should have been what we 
are had there not lived, and thought, and suffered, and 
written, and preached the Saxon monk, Martin 
Luther." 

THE CHRISTIAN AT WORK. 

**The voice of Christendom pronounces the name 
of Martin Luther to-day, not only with admiration, 
but with the profoundest feelings that can stir the 
human heart. The significance of his name, hovv^ever, 
and of the innumerable celebrations held in honor of 
the four hundredth anniversary of his birth, lies in the 
fact that he represented more than any other one man 
the principles of the great Reformation of the six- 
teenth century. In what did this mighty upheaval of 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 1 65 

human thought consist? It was more than a Revival 
of Letters, although this revival was one of its power- 

"Again, the Reformation was something more than 
the result of the invention of Printing. True, the 
quickening influences of the Press — one of the mighti- 
est of agencies — just then burst upon the world. 

" Nor is the Reformation to be identified with the 
astounding development at this time of the vernacular 
tongues of Europe. * >fc * * * 

" Once more : Let no ardent lover of liberty claim 
that the Reformation was the offspring of the free 
cities, and struggles for national independence that 
then asserted their ability to regenerate and ennoble 
the human race. ****** 

" What, then, was the Reformation ? It was the free 
proclamation of the Gospel, the glad tidings of Jesus 
Christ as the only balm for the sin-sick soul. The 
supreme source of the Reformation was the discovery 
and circulation of the Bible as the only infallible guide 
in doctrine and practice. The papacy had built its 
huge foundations on tradition, on the authority of 
councils and on the sole word of the pope as the Vicar 
of Christ and only irresistible aid of God among men. 
The battle shout of the Reformation was, Down with 
the pope; up with the Bible! In the words of Chil- 
lingworth, 'The Bible, I say, the Bible is the only 
religion of Protestants ! ' Exactly. The Reformers 
received the name of Protestants after the diet of Spires 
in 1529, because under the influence of this Book of 
Life they protested against the imperial decree, which 



1 66 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

would have closed the Bible and destroyed freedom of 
worship. They had been protesting all along against 
the authority of the pope as infallible ; against the 
meritoriousness of good works ; against the abom- 
inable sale of indulgences to commit sin; against the 
idolatrous worship of the Virgin Mary, and of saints 
and relics ; against five of the seven sacraments ; 
against the dogma of transubstantiation and the sacri- 
fice of the mass ; against prayers for the dead ; against 
the use of the Latin language in services for the 
people; against everything and every man, priest or 
bishop, that dares to step between the individual soul 
and its God. ' Catholicism,' says Schleiermacher, 
' makes the believer's relation to Christ depend upon 
his relation to the church; Protestantism makes the 
believer's relation to the church depend upon his rela- 
tion to Christ.' Protestantism knows no priest, save 
the one all perfect j^riest, Jesus Christ ; it claims the 
right of private judgment against all the councils that 
ever assembled, and follows individual conscience, en- 
lightened by the Divine Word, as safer than the ipse 
dixit of any pope, even the best that ever graced the 
triple tiara. It was for these regenerative and world- 
lifting principles that Luther thundered and the gentle 
Melanchthon prayed in Germany; for which Calvin 
and Farel labored in Geneva and France, and Tindale 
was burned in Holland, and Cranmer and Ridley and 
Latimer went to heaven in robes of flame from Eng- 
land. These principles, more than any other cause, 
have helped to emancipate the human mind from ig- 
norance, the citizen from tyranny, the worshipper from 
priestcraft and the soul from every form of spiritual 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. i^j 

thraldom. Let them be exalted. As the horse bear- 
ing the body of the dead Cid put to flight more ene- 
mies than hosts of living generals, so may the grand 
old name of Luther, coupled with these principles 
ride triumphant through the future, as it has through 
four centuries just closed." — Nov. 8th. 

THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN, 



« ( 



HERE I stand; I CANNOT DO OTHERWISE; GOD 
HELP ME.' 

" These words are familiar to every school ooy. 
They are great in themselves, but infinitely greater 
when considered in connection with the man who 
used them, and the occasion which called them forth. 
Should any one read them without knowing their 
origin, he would conclude they came from a man who 
was acting in some great crisis of his life. They carry 
with them proof of the heated depth out of which they 
sprang. But all who are acquainted in any measure 
with the scene at Worms when the heroic Reformer, 
standing in the presence of so many enemies, defend- 
ing himself and his books, made this final declaration, 
must add the effect of the splendid picture to the 
intense meaning of the language. * * * 

" Luther stood against the tradition of the ages, and 
against the despotism that had become the chief dis- 
tinction of those who represented it. To face all the 
dangers suggested by such conditions required a cour- 
age that none but the hero possesses. 

" In all the attitudes in which he is seen during 
those memorable days, none is more striking than this 
one at Worms. He is alone or nearly so. His cause 



1 68 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

had as yet made but little progress. He was in the 
presence of men who regarded him as an apostate and 
enemy of God. They thirsted, many of them, for his 
blood. But he did not falter. He spoke warmly, but 
collectedly. His boldness increased with his danger 
until he became the very impersonation of moral hero- 
ism. After justifying his works and reaffirming his 
determination to stand by the Scriptures and his con- 
science, he ended all with the words that are so sub- 
limely linked with the immortality of his name." 

THE CHRISTIAN LEADER, 

Universalist, Rev. George H. Emerson, D. D., editor, says: 

" Of the many peaks which make the culminating 
points of the White Mountain range, five have an emi- 
nence above others to a degree so marked that they 
are classified apart, and are honored with Presidential 
names. Of the by no means small company who by 
pen, voice and act, led in the great emancipation of 
Central Europe from papal bondage, five rendered 
such decisive and conspicuous services as to eclipse 
all coadjutors — Luther, Erasmus, Zwingli, Melanch- 
thon and Calvin. Of these peaks of the Reformation 
range, the Mount Washington, by many degrees of 
elevation and grandeur, is the once monk of the 
Augustinian convent of Erfurt — Dr. Martin Luther." I 

THE RELIGIOUS HERALD, 

Congregational, of Hartford, Conn., David B. Moseley editor, says 
November i, 1883: 

** Luther thus rooted and grounded in the truth, not 
only by his intellectual conviction but also by his 
heart experiences, could not be frightened by papal 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 1 69 

anathemas from his steadfastness. He was a fearless 
moral hero. He did not quail before kings and nobles, 
nor yield to the imposing assumptions of ecclesiastical 
dignitaries. He was an orator whose magnetic elo- 
quence enchained the masses. He was a sturdy and 
keen debater, whom the champions of the papacy 
learned to dread in a disputation. He was a scholar 
whose attainments no one could question. He was a 
writer whose tracts and books thrilled, charmed, and 
swayed the people. He was a poet whose sacred 
songs touched the most sacred chords of the human 
heart. This was the man whom the Lord raised up 
to break the papal yoke and remove it from the necks 
of the people. * * :}c :i< * * 

" Luther was a wonderful man. He stood unabashed 
in the presence of nobles and princes, and was at the 
same time the affable companion of the peasant. He 
wielded the dreaded pen of the keen controversalist, 
and wrote sacred hymns full of sweetness. He faced 
his foes with lion-like fierceness, and played with his 
children in gleeful zest. He discussed nice points of 
Greek and Hebrew grammar and lexicography with 
Jonas and Melanchthon, and counseled the Elector 
Frederick on critical questions of statesmanship. Such 
a man is worthy to be remembered." 

THE PRESBYTERIAN. 

"The name of Luther is just now the most promi- 
nent name before the Protestant nations. The four 
hundredth anniversary of his birth has come, and sove- 
reigns, nations, universities and venerable churches, are 
stirring themselves to do honor to the German monk. 



170 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



In Germany especially, the people and the princes are 
alike moved to an enthusiastic remembrance of the 
man whose name is among the grandest on the 
national records. What Germany would have been 
without Luther no one can say, but every one is ready 
to concede that his influence upon the national life has 
been more potent than any other influence which has 
worked upon it in the last four centuries. In the 
cities of Germany they are raising monuments, carving 
statues, observing elaborate ceremonials, in which all 
the power of art, music and of eloquent speech is em- 
ployed to glorify the name of the great Reformer. In 
Eisenach, where he sang under the windows of the 
houses for bread, and in Erfurt, where he was a 
student in the University, the students have celebrated 
the early life of this great student. And the Roman 
Catholics are adding keenness to the interest felt and 
expressed, by adding largely to the abusive words 
which they ordinarily heap upon this old and power- 
ful foe of the papacy. Friend and foe are thus aroused 

alike by the recurrence of this anniversary. 

********* 

" We do not propose to follow his upward course, 
nor to give any sketch of a life which is now coming 
under general review, but to draw attention to the fact 
which, we think, ought now to be specially empha- 
sized, to wit : that the special qualifications of Martin 
Luther for the work to which he was called grew out 
of his profound religious experience. His intellectual 
growth and his constantly increasing acquisitions were 
consecrated by a baptism of the Holy Spirit which 
came upon him in early life. * * * * 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



171 



" We hope that this great spiritual lesson will be 
deeply impressed upon the vast companies which will 
be gathered to do honor to Luther's name." 

THE LUTHERAN VISITOR, 

Of Prosperity, S. C, organ of the General Synod South, Rev. J. Hawk- 
ins, D. D., Editor, says: 

" A Presbyterian minister, in Electra for November, 
says : * Though Luther was shut up in the Wartburg 
castle, the Reformation went on. God, no doubt, in- 
tended to separate the Avork from the man, and estab- 
lish it on the simple basis of Gospel truth.' This is 
a grand mistake. We can easily conceive of a Re- 
formation without a Justus Jonas, a Bugenhagen, an 
Elector Frederick, or a Melanchthon, yea, even with- 
out a Zwingli or a Calvin ; but we can no more con- 
ceive of a Reformation without Luther than we can 
conceive of a New Testament without a Paul, or 
American independence without a Washington. Luth- 
er's name and character and spirit are as indelibly 
stamped upon every feature of the great Reformation, 
and of the church which grew out of it, as is the spirit 
and character of St. Paul upon his epistles. The 
Sunday-school Times has an elaborate article on one- 
man power. It says that God has always worked 
through one man at a time. ' He putteth down one 
and setteth up another' 

" 'And it is much the same in outside history. The 
history of the world is practically the history of indi- 
viduals; and the story of one man at a time is the 
story of the race which for the time felt that one man's 
power. It is Xerxes, or Alexander, or Caesar, or 



172 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



Charlemagne, or Saladin, or Cromwell, or Napoleon, 
or Washington. It is Columbus, or Galileo, or Guten- 
berg. It is Plato or Aristotle. It is Wolsey, or 
Hampden, or Richelieu, or Voltaire. It is Homer, or 
Virgil, or Cicero, or Shakespeare. In whichever 
sphere of life we review the history, the one-man 
power is, for the time being, the chief power exhib- 
ited in that history.' 

" In all this array of names, that of Luther does not 
appear. Here is a one-man power besides which the 
power of many names mentioned by the Siinday-sclwol 
Times is very weakness itself This name to-day sways 
to a greater or less extent the politics, the literature, 
the theology and the religion of the world." 

THE VERMONT CHRONICLE, 

A religious organ of Montpelier, Vt., in its issue of November 9, 1SS3, 
contains the following eulogistic editorial : 

*' Protestantism has never been wont to canonize its 
saints and heroes. It gives God thanks for them, and 
gives them all needed admiration and gratitude in its 
heart. No one among its mighty men does it more 
honor than Martin Luther. There was everything 
about the man to fill the ages with love for him. 
Erasmus was a prodigy of learning. Melanchthon 
was strong and irresistible in logic. Luther was 
greater than either in his immense personality, in his 
grand manliness, in his great human nature, in all 
qualities of heart and life and love. And so it was 
that Luther's strong nature wrought a hundred-fold 
more effectively than all the vast scholarship and 
all the keen dialectics of his illustrious co-workers, 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 1^3 

towards arresting the sinking Church of Christ from 
destruction, and planting it again upon the old founda- 
tion of God's Word. Germany has had a long, shining 
list of great men — brilliant statesmen, powerful rulers, 
mighty warriors, profound thinkers, renowned poets. 
But the one name that towers above them all in the 
German's pride and love, is that of Martin Luther, 
He stands out as no other man does against the back- 
ground of history, a clear, strong figure, in human 
flesh, with a courage in him unequaled among men. 
His humanity was complete. Although he was en- 
gaged in the most serious, perplexing, and perilous 
mission ever laid upon man, he was full of humor, and 
gracious sympathy, and open to all the cheer of fellow- 
ship and the joy of life. Such a grand, warm figure 
as this, fills the imaginations and holds the hearts of 
all men. Age does not obscure it. It only clarifies 
it, and makes it more intense. And so we can under- 
stand the magnificent outburst of enthusiasm which 
has seized upon the German people in their celebra- 
tions of the four hundredth birthday of Luther. Ger- 
mans with little religious faith glory in the greatness 
of the man, for they feel that he was the greatest Ger- 
man of all. Men of Protestant conviction admire more 
and more the tremendous work that Luther did for 
the Church of Christ, and for the individual believer. 
He tore aside a thousand barriers which the church 
had erected between the soul and its Maker, and let 
God as a Father down close to m.an as God's child. 
He thus gave such a sense of worth to the human 
nature, of its dignity and possibilities, which has made 
itself felt with an irresistible power in every sphere of 



1/4 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



man's being and activity. Civil liberty, equality of 
rights, all free institutions and free thoughts which 
belong to modern civilization, had their rise in that 
fountain-head of religious liberty and individual worth 
which Luther broke into and set a-flowing. Protestant 
Christians of every nationality acknowledge the sur- 
passing work which the German monk did in all these 
ways. They marvel at his work, and they thank God 
for it. And yet it is with Protestants everywhere as 
it is witli the Germans themselves — it is the man 
Luther, that holds their chief admiration. That great 
figure of his, that bold, fearless face, that ringing, defi- 
ant voice, that genial though cutting wit, that beam- 
ing, triumphant look — these external features and 
expressions of the man as he stood up, pleading for 
the truth in that Diet of Worms, carry men's imagina- 
tion and seize upon men's homage the world over. 
Luther was no recluse. He was a man among men, 
and he could stand before kings. He could be as 
severe as John Knox was; but he could not be as 
grim as was he. His severity was human. He had 
no cant about him. He was honest, even sometimes 
to coarseness. His faith in God, was his faith in truth. 
He was persuaded that it must needs triumph; and so 
he put himself into perils, went into ventures, with a 
courage which nothing could shake. And with all 
this loftiness of spirit, he was as humble and tender as 
a child. The affectionateness of the man was some- 
thing marvelous in one so strong and independent. 
Here, in these qualities of his heart, he rules men to- 
day. The sublimity of his faith, and the childlikeness 
of his nature, are the double scepters by which he still 
sways so many men." 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



75 



THE AMERICAN WESLEYAN, 

Of Syracuse, N. Y., Rev. N. Wardner, Editor. 

" One of the leading characteristics of Luther was 
his great courage and unflinching fideHty. He was 
not a man to be terrified by any array of opposition, or 
weakened in the least by the most threatening perils. 
Like the great apostle, he counted not his ' life dear 
unto himself,' that he might vindicate the truth. 
Though * devils' were as plenty as * tiles,' on the 
houses, he would go to ' Worms,' or anywhere else, 
where duty called. This fearless dev^otion, which com- 
mitted all to Christ for service or sacrifice, and ever 
trusted his almighty presence and aid, was the under- 
lying might that gave to the world the great Reformer 
and the great Reformation." — Nov. 14, 1883. 

THE ARKANSAS METHODIST, 

Of Little Rock, S. G. Colburn, Editor. 

" It was meet that the whole Protestant world should 
have been engaged in the celebration of this anniver- 
sary, for Martin Luther was more than a Lutheran. 
He belongs to the whole Protestant world ; his name 
and the blessings of his life are a common heritage. 
The church of Rome could, with equal propriety, have 
entered into the celebration ; for she, not less than other 
churches, is indebted to the man who defied the Pope, 
burned the papal bulls, withstood the whole Roman 
hierarchy, and thundered against its corruptions ; and 
indeed the Church of Rome has been led to pay tribute 
unwillingly, to the great Reformer's work, by setting 
the day apart as an international day of prayer, in all 
the Roman Catholic churches of the world, for the 



1/6 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



unification and triumph of the church. Such a move- 
ment was started by the Cathohc church of Germany, 
and though inaugurated to counteract the influence of 
the Protestant celebration, it is yet a concession and a 
tribute. It would be impossible to estimate the influ- 
ence of his life and labors. There is no means of com- 
puting the blessings to the world of the Reformation 
which he, under God, was the instrument of bringing 
about. The revival of learning, the disenthralment of 
thought and feeling, the unchained and open Bible to 
the masses, and the consequent elevation of the church 
above the darkness of superstition and error, and the 
dawn of our civilization, are to be taken into account, 
when we would form some estimate of the value of his 
life to the world. He was a grand man. The more 
closely we study him, the more deeply we are im- 
pressed with the grandeur of his character. We can 
scarcely conceive of moral heroism more sublime than 
that which was shown in his appearance before the Diet 
of Worms. With the whole Catholic world against 
him, knowing not whether ' bonds, imprisonment or 
death' awaited him, in spite of the protestations of 
friends, he obeyed^the summons to appear before the 
august body that was to sit in judgment upon his doc- 
trines, saying in the language and faith of a true martyr : 
* Though there were as many devils in Worms as there 
are tiles on its roofs, I would enter.' And he did enter: 
and undaunted in the presence of all the dignitaries 
of Church and State, he calmly and fearlessly gave 
' a reason for the hope that was within him,' closing 
his famous speech with these decided words : ' Here 1 
take my stand, I can do no otherwise, so help me God, 
Amen.'" — Nov. 17, 1883. 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. lyy 

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE JOURNAL, 

Of Concord, N. H., Rev. George B. Spalding, D. D., Editor. 

" On the tenth instant will occur the four hundredth 
birthday of Martin Luther, and the occasion will be 
commemorated throughout Christendom as the birth- 
day of no other man has ever been. This commemor- 
ation will take largely the form of discourses upon the 
personality and work of the great Reformer through- 
out the pulpits of Protestant Christendom. It is alto- 
gether fitting that this should he the case. For 
Luther's life stands in vital relat.^ii to the religious 
experience of to-day and the religious life of all com- 
ing time. His experience and his work are wrought 
as inseparably into Christian thought and Christian 
life, as were the experience and work of the apostle 
Paul. 

" It is not the greatness of the man that will call forth 
such universal homage to his memory, though his 
heroic proportions make him the representative man 
of his age and his nation, and, in a sense, of evangeli- 
cal Christendom of every age. But it is because his 
personality stands in such vital relation to Christian 
experience and Christian history, that Protestant pul- 
pits will echo with his name, and Protestant thought 
will dwell upon his memory. 

" In Luther we have embodied the Protestant Refor- 
mation; and in the Protestant Reformation we have 
Christianity restored to us in its primitive purity, and 
its beneficent influence incorporated into modern life. 
The Reform.er stands as the champion and vindicator 
of the spiritual over the formal in religious experience 
and religious institutions. He stands as the champion 
8* 



:78 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



and vindicator of the independence and the sanctity of 
the individual man in his mental and spiritual exper- 
ience; as the representative and champion of the doc- 
trine of justification by faith, which is the very marrow 
of the gospel, and makes it at once honoring to God 
and grateful to man. He stands as the champion of 
the Scriptures, as the exclusive teacher of divine truth, 
and still more as a living means of grace. 

" It is because the ideas for which he stood, and 
stands, have become so largely incorporated into 
modern life that we owe mainly the different character 
which modern civilization presents from that which 
the civilization of the middle ages wore — a difference 
so great as to make the two seem to belong to different 
worlds. Christianity as restored by Luther has proved 
itself the salt of the earth, preserving the wholesome 
elements of life with which it has come into contact 
from the corruption which else had well nigh totally 
destroyed them. We owe to the Reformation the es- 
tablishment of political and religious liberty. We 
owe to it the invigoration of the intellect, and its direc- 
tion into the channels of useful knowledge. We owe 
to it the humanitarianism and the gracious charity of 
modern life, and whatever else which is lovely and 
pure and of good report that came from the breaking 
down of the separation between religion and the varied 
activities of life. The contrast between England and 
Italy of to-day, or between the United States and 
Mexico, is not as great as would be that presented by 
the Christian world at the present time without the 
Reformation, and the Christian world with it. For 
Roman Catholic Christianity has profited indirectly by 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. j^g 

the Reformation, and never has shown so debased a 
condition of society where it prevails, as it would were 
it left without the reaction of the Reformation upon 
itself 

"Well may the world then celebrate the birthday of 
him who was the central figure in the reformation of 
its religion, with all its beneficent influences upon the 
life of man. Well may it call to mind the principles 
for which the Reformer stood, and strengthen its re- 
solution to maintain them intelligently and vigilantly 
and courageously." — Nov. 9, 1883. 

THE CHRISTIAN HOUR, 

The Presbyterian organ for Iowa, Nebraska, and the Northwest, 
William J. Harsha and Thomas C. Hall, editors, Omaha, Neb. 

"There is a profound significance in the spectacle 
of the whole world uniting to celebrate the birthday 
of a humble German monk. England has the birth- 
day of her queen to remember ; France does homage 
to the birthday of her Napoleons, and the United 
States celebrate the birthday of Washington. But 
there are no local and sectional interests — there are no 
national aims and patriotism — in the united re\'erence 
paid to the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of 
the great Reformer. We behold the whole world 
moved by a common impulse — filled with a single idea 
— and that not political or social, but religious. Is 
there not something significant in this ? May not an 
argument be found here upon the much-mooted ques- 
tion: 'Is the old faith dying?' * * * * 

"Of the results of Luther's work there is little need 
of speaking — the world Is full of them, and a man can 



l8o TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

not open his eyes upon a Protestant Sabbath without 
being impressed with them. The fundamental doc- 
trine of justification by faith alone has been vindicated. 
The right of a penitent soul to approach God through 
Christ, without the help of priest, or pope, or saint, 
was explained. Free pardon was offered to the most 
wretched sinner who sincerely repents. The Bible 
was given to Germany in German, and to England in 
English. Political liberty, social purity, and spreading 
intellectual light, followed as a matter of course. All 
the best institutions of this free land were made possi- 
ble by the religious movement started in the penitent 
heart of the sturdy German monk. 

"And what is our duty? It is to defend the re- 
formed theology, to spread the glorious message of 
free pardon, to encourage souls to confess to God 
alone, and to work into our own lives, under the 
Spirit's blessing, the purifying principles that regener- 
ated Luther and shall regenerate the world." — Nov. 
% 1883. 

THE CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN (METHODIST). 

"As Methodists, our teaching respecting personal, 
spiritual religion places us in direct opposition to every 
form of Romish ritualism and sacramentarianism. There 
is also an historical link connecting Methodism with 
Luther. It was while a person was reading Luther's 
preface to the epistle to the Romans, in a society meet- 
ing at Aldersgate, that Wesley found the peace of God. 
To give his own words : ' I felt my heart was strangely 
warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for 
salvation. An assurance was given me that He had 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



I8l 



taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the 
law of sin and death.' Millions have reason to thank 
God for raising up Luther. While we join in the gen- 
eral thanksgiving, let us examine ourselves to find out 
if we have the brave, truth-loving spirit of Luther, 
or whether we have not a something of Romish 
intolerance and sectarianism under the name of Pro- 
testantism." 

THE CHRISTIAN EVANGELIST, 

Of St. Louis, Mo., I. H. Garrison, W, H. Johnson, J. H. Smart, 
Editors. 

"What was it, in the character of Martin Luther, 
that entitles him to the gratitude and the admiration 
of mankind ? It was not his learning, for there were 
greater scholars ; nor was it the correctness of his 
theological views, for others were his superiors even in 
this regard, and he was never free from some gross 
superstitions. It was not his intellectual superiority in 
any field of thought that makes him the hero he is in 
our eyes to-day. It was not in any or all of these re- 
spects that Luther looms up so grandly above all his 
compeers. But in this : Having learned, from reading 
the Bible in his cloister, that the church of which he 
was a member was vitally wrong in doctrine and 
grossly wrong in practice, he had the sublime faith and 
courage to denounce the wrong and proclaim the right, 
in the face of papal denunciation, royal disfavor, and 
the prospect of death, as the penalty of so doing. 
What God taught in His blessed word ought to be pro- 
claimed, though it disrupt the church, overturn the 
decrees of Popes and councils, and run contrary to the 



1 82 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

prejudices and time-honored usages of the great mass 
of the religionists of his age. The corrupt practices 
of the church and its officials must be exposed, though 
it stir up a revolution, and cost him his life. This was 
Luther's greatness and his glory. He had the cour- 
age of his moral convictions. He believed, and there- 
fore spoke. He was iiiO miserable time-server. He 
believed that God, who had enabled him to see His 
truth, would take care of him and his future, if he 
would stand up bravely for that truth against the mal- 
edictions of civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries. Foi 
that the world honors Luther, and he would be en- 
titled to that honor no less had he fallen a victim to the 
malice of Charles V, and failed to carry out his plans 
for reform. A man's greatness is not to be measured 
by the world's standard of success. * * * * 
" If the religious world is to be benefitted by this 
revival of the memory of Luther, and this wide-spread 
celebration of his virtues, it must be by our drinking 
in more of the spirit of his moral heroism, and his un- 
yielding fidelity to the word of God. If the historic 
scene of the great German Reformer confronting the 
Diet of Worms and re-affirming his principles, shall 
nerve any preacher of the gospel to condemn popular 
evils and to proclaim unpopular truths ; if it teach us 
to respect God's reformers of to-day, and to submit 
ourselves anew to the sole guidance of God's word ; if 
it shall rebuke our moral cowardice and qualify us, in 
some degree, to bear the frowns of the world for the 
smile of God, then indeed will this world-wide cele- 
bration not have been in vain. But if, when all the 
noise and parade and eloquent eulogies are over, there 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 1 83 

has come to the Protestant world no perceptible in- 
crease of moral courage for the condemnation of the 
sins and abuses of our own times, and no high resolve 
to follow the light of God's word wherever it may 
lead, the event will only furnish a fresh illustration of 
how men may admire a virtue in another, if its exer- 
cise involve no personal inconvenience to them, while 
they are wholly incapable of putting it into practice in 
their own lives. 

"Luther said: 'Satan is an artful orator, and his 
highest art is to make a law out of the gospel.' The 
great Reformer said few things more significant, and 
evincing keener insight into human nature than that. 
The tendency from Christ's time to the present has 
been to construct an inflexible law out of Christ's free 
gospel. The spirit of the gospel cries, 'Stand fast in 
the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free ;' but 
the spirit of the church has too often been, ' Submit 
graciously to the bondage wherewith the customs, 
usages and traditions of the church have bound you.' " 
— November 15, 1883. 

THE WATCHMAN, 

Baptist. 

" The approaching Lutheran commemoration makes 
especially pertinent whatever pertains to the life and 
career of the great Protestant Reformer. It is hence 
fitting that he should be made the subject and theme 
of discourse and discussion by the pulpit, the platform 
and the press. The recent triennial Congregational 
Council at Concord brought Martin Luther into the 
foreground, where in report, followed by eloquent 



1 84 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



Speech, he had due and fitting recognition. Prof. 
Egbert Smyth was inspiring and impressive in his de- 
Hverance, as was also Rev. Dr. Duryea. Prof. Smyth 
set Luther forth as a grand motive power to hoHness, 
and pleaded for his example to become more pervasive 
and potential in the Congregational body. Dr. Duryea 
contemplated the Reformer as an apostle of moral and 
spiritual freedom, and thus as largely an emancipator 
in the realm of religious thought and of action. 

" Both the Andover professor and the Boston pastor 
gave expression from the standpoint which each holds 
respectively in viewing what was distinctive in the 
pioneer Reformer of Germany. There is much truth 
doubtless in what each urged and insisted on. 

" Martin Luther in rising up in his spirit of a mighty 
remonstrance, in his vehement protest against the 
Romanism of the times, was animated first of all, it 
may never be doubted, by zeal and devotion to the 
cause of the Lord Jesus. That vocal text in Romans, 
* The just shall live by faith,' was the quickening key- 
note of his whole ministry, and of his course as chief- 
est of the reformers. In the spirit with which it elec- 
trified and fired him on, it was ever with him, whether 
writing his commentary on Galatians, whether preach- 
ing or talking or communing by the wayside, or stand- 
ing in the presence of hierarchs, of potentates, or of 
kings and princes. Never did he cease to glory in 
his protest, while in this motto-text he found enfolded 
the core and central principle of the Reformation. It 
is safe to assume that, to his far-seeing view, that 
Reformation itself was to stand or fall just in so far as 
its disciples saw clearly and held firmly its basal truth, 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



185 



or as they saw it dimly and held it with a loosened 
grasp. 

"The religion of Martin Luther thus got its key- 
note and its inspiration from this New Testament 
doctrine of justification by faith in Christ — and there 
alone. A religion which is central and concentered 
there, which is anchored on this very * Rock of Ages,' 
cannot be else than the mightiest incentive to holiness, 
as a host of consecrated men and women, heralds and 
missionaries of the cross in all lands, bear witness. 
Carey and Marshman, the Judsons, and many more, 
not counting their lives dear unto them, have for 
Christ's sake borne the Gospel as Paul and other 
Apostles bore it onward, until death amid peaceful 
scenes or martyr sufferings ended their mission among 
the living. 

" If it is sucro-ested that Luther came as a relig^ious 
liberalizer in the sense and with the stress that is now- 
a-days so much assumed, there are many who will de- 
mur to this claim. Luther was no such religious eman- 
cipator as that. As insistent as Calvin on the great 
essentials of what is elemental and fundamental in that 
which is known as the system of evangelical truth, 
he stood sturdy as a rock to this consensus and con- 
fession * of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.' 
Not more than the equally eminent and perhaps intel- 
lectually greater Genevan preacher and reformer, not 
more than Paul himself, would Luther at any time 
have blanched, or departed from the purpose to ' know 
nothing among men save Jesus Christ and him cruci- 
fied.' It was this 'banner displayed because of the 
truth' under which the battalions enlisted by the Pro- 



1 86 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

testant Reformation of the sixteenth century went 
forth before trembling Rome to their achievements 
and to their triumphs. As there would have been 
retrogression rather than progress under any other 
banner, as there would have been defeat in room of 
victory, so must it be for four hundred years later; so 
must it be to the end." 

THE CHRISTIAN INDEX, 

Of Atlanta, Ga., M. B. Wharton, Editor. 

"During our residence abroad, we lived in the very 
cradle of the Reformation, and in the midst of scenes 
forever memorable because associated with the name 
of Luther, * * * We have seen many of his relics 
— his garments, books, manuscripts, drinking cups, bed, 
writing desk, and writing materials. We felt, though 
nearly four centuries divided us, that we were near 
him, and tried to drink in some of his inspiration. 
He was a wonderful man. With his gigantic intellect, 
iron will, and persevering industry, he broke the papal 
power, and gave light and liberty to an empire. 
Though the Germans have in many instances departed 
from his teachings, it is yet fitting that they should 
honor the man who did such a mighty work for his 
people." — Nov. 15, 1883. 



THE AMERICAN, 

Philadelphia. 

*' No other German celebration could excite so much 
interest throughout the rest of the world ; for no other 
German occupies such a position in the world's history 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



187 



as does Martin Luther. His name is a household 
word throughout Protestant Christendom : i. e., among 
the most progressive, enhghtened and prosperous peo- 
ples of the world. To his initiative as a Reformer 
those peoples in great part owe the qualities which 
give them their preeminence in the present and their 
prospects in the future; to his memory is due the 
tribute of respect which mankind must pay to the great 
leaders and benefactors of mankind. 

*' But whatever Luther may be to the people of other 
countries, he always must be more to Germans than 
to other Protestants. He is the German man — more 
distinctly such than any other in German history. 
The best qualities of the Teutonic character — staunch 
truthfulness, loyalty to wife and home, childlike simpli- 
city, cheerfulness, happy humor, fervent devotion to the 
Fatherland, fearless faith in God, and joy in the truths 
of the Gospel — all these are united in Luther as in no 
one else. He is not the less dear to German hearts 
because he was not a faultless man. * * * g^^ 
after all allowance is made for his scars and wrinkles, 
he remains one of the grandest figures in religious his- 
tory — a figure of mountainous bulk, in whose outline 
scars are hardly noticeable. 

" The central point in the man's character was his 
profound and unshaken faith in the living God. Of 
Moses it is written that *he endured as seeing Him 
who is invisible.' It might be written of Luther also. 
That vision went with him through his life. God was 
the first of realities with him. Hence his personal 
contempt for danger when the fate of Huss seemed to 
impend over him at Worms. * * * He stood un- 



X88 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

shaken and as on a rock amid the shifts and changes 
of his time, always beheving that a higher power than 
emperors, princes and nobles had a hand in the mak- 
ing of history, and would fail in nothing that the 
good cause required. ' If our Lord God will have His 
Church,' said he, ' then we tell Him plainly that He 
must uphold it. We could not do so for an hour, and 
if we could we should be the proudest asses under 

|-»^rt----^*« ' yf. p^ if. ^f. >yc y^ y^ yf. 

" Luther is dear to his countrymen as the vindicator 
of the sacredness of family life as the best and most 
Christian kind of living. * * * What their family 
life was, in cheerful devoutness and constancy of faith, 
we know from the letters that passed between him and 
his wife, from the accounts left us by those who visited 
him in Wittenberg, and, above all, from that most in- 
discriminate and often blundering, but still admirable 
record of what passed at his own table, the * Tischre- 
den' (Table-Talk). It seems that we have in this huge 
congeries of his sayings little more than the record of 
the year 1534. Yet it exhibits the overflow of a mind 
large in its intellectual and moral interests, richly 
stored with the fruits of study and observation, and 
heartily devout in all things. We should have known 
Luther less intimately had no such Boswellian zeal 
been busy with him, in spite of his resistance and his 
protests. Some of his finest sayings are in the ' Table- 
Talk ;' and while it contains much that his enemies 
love to quote, it remains a remarkable monument to 
the household piety of a great and good man. His 
Christianity was not an official dress ; he never laid it 
aside. His heart was full, and his mouth ran over 
with good thoughts. 



EDITORS TRIBUTES. 1 89 

"From the first day of his appearance as a Re- 
former, the family and marriage held a lofty place in 
his thoughts. Divesting himself of scholastic sophis- 
tications, he fell back on the old Teutonic ideas of 
woman's worth and of the family's dignity. He hated 
monkery, he said, because it debarred men from bear- 
ing rule in the house, the State, or the Church. In 
the family, he told his people, they would find the true 
monastery, full of crosses and trials as many as the 
soul needed, but full also of jo}'s and blessings such 
as the monks never knew." 

THE PHILADELPHIA PRESS. 

" The world has seen all sorts of reformers and a 
great variety of reformations. Some have been mighty, 
while others have been ridiculous. The success of 
some has been followed with beneficent and lasting 
effects, while on the other hand there have been re- 
formations of considerable value whose effect has soon 
passed away. 

" The reformer, whose reformation of four hundred 
years ago we now celebrate, differed from most other 
reformers in his complete unselfishness and the absence 
of any plan for setting himself up as a leader. Moved 
by a conscientious conviction that there were wrongs 
in the Church which ougrht to be ricrhted, Luther com- 
menced, on a limited scale, an agitation of the possible 
extent of which he had very little conception. He 
knew the world only as he had seen it in his associa- 
tion with the scholarly men of Germany and the 
students who listened to their teachings. When he 
first saw society in Rome, he was bewildered. Return- 



1 90 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



ing from the sumptuous fare of the ecclesiastics in the 
Eternal City, he betook himself to his plain diet and 
his hard work with renewed convictions of the im- 
portance of the responsibility he had undertaken. 
Regardless of consequences to himself, he pushed 
ahead in the face of the fiercest opposition, not caring 
for a period of retirement and rest before he should 
die, and not concerning himself about the honor to be 
bestowed on his memory after his career should be 
ended. 

" One of the most noteworthy features of Luther's 
reformation was that there was no money in it for 
Luther or his friends, nor was there any of the fame or 
popular applause with which the ambitious souls of 
reformers are sometimes stirred. Luther put on no 
airs. He made no pompous publications as to what 
he intended to do. He asked no testimonials of 
esteem at the hands of his followers or of the public. 
Peculiar, eccentric, impulsive and enthusiastic, was 
Martin Luther. Yet not the bitterest of his enemies 
could call him a mere hobbyist, nor could they suc- 
cessfully impugn his motives. Of course, he was 
sneered at, and joked about, and cursed : but for that he 
cared nothing. 

"There is a wide gulf between the character of 
Martin Luther and that of some of the hobby-riders 
who have paraded themselves as reformers. There 
are some whose mere announcement of intended efforts 
at reformation are enough to brand them as cranks or 
self-seeking promoters of their own fortunes. Both in 
the church and in politics, quack reformers have been 
plenty. Their demonstrations are generally more like 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES. 



191 



the pompous performances of Tetzel, with gorgeous 
equipage and polychromatic parade, than the steady- 
work and the hard knocks with which Luther achieved 
such phenomenal success. 

" Of sham reformers and quack alleviators of mis- 
ery and wrong, we do well to be wary. Such people 
are plenty wherever an honest penny is to be turned, 
or a penny of any kind. In bold and honorable relief, 
in letters of gold, above all these men and their efforts, 
stands the name of Martin Luther, the man pure in 
purpose, honest in convictions, unflinching in the face 
of enemies, and true to the very end." — Nov. 1 1, 1883. 

THE BALTIMORE AMERICAN. 

"A bond of union among all Protestant churches is 
the Lutheran memorial which was celebrated yester- 
day all over the Protestant world. In Europe the 
ceremonies began some days ago ; but yesterday, be- 
ing the Sunday nearest to the birthday, was every- 
where the day for church services in honor of the day. 
In this city yesterday all forms of Protestantism — 
Episcopal and evangelical — improved the occasion. 
There were many eloquent sermons preached upon 
this inspiring theme. 

" Protestantism, divided and subdivided as it is into 
sects, is prone to dwell upon the points of difference in 
the creeds rather than upon the points of resemblance. 
It is, therefore, well for Christian fellowship that at 
times there come occasions like this, when all are 
united. Luther was the greatest spiritual leader that 
has lived since apostolic times, and his life seems to be 
the heritage of all Christians, as is St. Paul's. It is an 



IQ2 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ennobling thing to study such a life as his was. There 
is a benefit, too, in recalling the times in which he 
lived. One of the good results of the Luther festival 
is that it stimulates the study of one of the great eras 
of history. The sermons that are preached will 
awaken a desire to know more of this grand personal- 
ity and of his epoch. The religious awakening was 
one of the symptoms of the general intellectual stir 
that animated the sixteenth century. The study of 
the ancient literatures, the renaissance in art, the dawn- 
ings of physical science, the discovery of America, and 
other similar things, marked the daybreak of modern- 
mindedness in Europe. A grand type of men came at 
that epoch. A love of adventure and of heroic deeds 
survived from the knightly mediaeval times ; but along 
with this courage and enterprise came a higher intel- 
lectuality. Luther was the leader in religious progress, 
as Columbus was in discovery, and Michael Angelo in 
art. The time was ripe for casting off the fetters from 
free thought, and if Luther had not come, there would 
have been some other leader ; but the chance would 
have been slight that so grand a leader as he would 
have come at the call of his epoch."— Nov. 12, 1883. 

THE CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN. 

"Of the grand total of Christendom, 400,000,000, 
not less than 1 20,000,000 are Protestants, and by com- 
mon consent, Luther is regarded the father of Protest- 
antism. >K ***** * 

*'To Luther the Bible was not simply the sacred 
Scriptures of the Jews. It was rather the veritable 
word of God. ****** 



EDITORS' TRIBUTES, Iq3 

" It is inconceivable that the 400th birthday of any 
other man could be celebrated so widely and with 
such profound interest. ***** 

" The Catholic church is one. The Vatican with its 
forty or fifty thousand apartments is the veritable capi- 
tol of a veritable empire, and one as autocratic as Rus- 
sia. The Protestant church has no such unity. It is 
none less true, that over them all, the scepter of Luther 
is held with a potential sway. * * * * 

" Luther was hardly less the Reformer of Rome, 
than the father of Protestantism." 

" The celebration of the four hundredth anniversary 
of Luther's birth was certainly the largest and most 
inspiring known in this city's (Chicago) history, where 
so many religious gatherings of great size have been 
held." 
9 



PART III. 

WHAT EMINENT DIVINES AND OTHER SPEAK- 
ERS HAVE SAID OF LUTHER DURING 
THE RECENT LUTHER QUARTO- 
CENTENARY FESTIVITIES. 



l^ 



THE LUTHER CENTENARY * 

Adapted from Whittler's Centennial Hymn. 

BY. W. H. S. 
Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, Thy servants, free 
And loyal to our Church and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done. 
And praise Thee for the opening one. 

"Where'er of old, by Thy design, 

Our fathers preached that Word of Thine, 

Whose echo is the glad refrain 

Of rended link in error's chain, 

Let every land in concert sing 

Glad anthems to our God and King. 

Thou who hast here in concord furled 
The banners of a Christian world, 
Beneath our western skies fulfill 
The angel's message of good will, 
Jehovah-nissi still our song — • 
To Him the praises all belong. 

O make Thou us through centuries long 
Secure in God our fortress strong ! 
Around our homes of freedom draw 
The safeguards of Thy righteous law ! 
Then, kept by Thine almighty hand. 
Thy holy Church will ever stand ! 

* Can be sung to music of Centennial Hymn by J. K. Paine. 



PULPIT TRIBUTES. 



THEODORE L. CUYLER, 

Pastor of Lafayette Ave. Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

" Let us take one more look at what Luther was, 
and what he gave to Germany and the world. In the 
first place, he gave the world a prodigious /^rj^;^^///;/. 
He 'bulks' largest, and casts the longest shadow, of 
any man of modern times. Napoleon's genius was 
more splendid; but in sixty years it has gone to ashes. 
Four centuries hence that comet will require the tele- 
scope of history; Luther, after four centuries, still rides 
the heavens as a primary planet. Great men are the 
greatest hand-work of the Almighty; and since the 
Apostle Paul stood on Mars Hill, the most majestic 
personality this world has seen was Martin Luther 
before the Diet of Worms. Look at the stout Saxon 
monk as he stands there before Caesar, squarely in his 
peasant shoes. His shoulders are broad enough to 
carry off the gates of the Vatican ; he has a neck like 
a bull, and an eye like a falcon's. Those coal-black 
eyes * flash like a demon's,' said the pope's underling 
at Worms; they pierce through the soul of every 
beholder. 

*' All the world was listening for his answer to Em- 
peror and Pontiff; never since Pilate's judgment-hall 
had so much depended upon an answer. If Luther 
had turned white in the lips that day and betrayed his 
Lord, then awakened Europe might have sunk back 
(199) 



200 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

'nto night, and the whole history of the world been 
altered. The immortal answer which bolted from the 
lion's mouth is the best-known sentence outside of the 
Bible — ' Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise ; God 
help me! Amen.' That sentence unbarred the gates 
of the morning, and in streamed the Reformation I 

"When Luther began his revolt against Rome, 
his eye did not look beyond the confines of his native 
country. His patriotism was as profound as his piety. 
The peasant's son of Eisleben was, in every fibre of 
him, a German, as Nehemiah was a Jew, and William 
the Silent was a Hollander. His soul had waxed hot 
within him, when at Rome he had heard his country- 
men reviled as * stupid Germans' and * German beasts.' 
Popish tyranny was more intolerable to him, because 
it was the tyranny of the Italian over the Teutonic 
race; and he demanded a spiritual independence for 
his Fatherland. To this hour Martin Luther is the 
ever-living Emperor of the Teutons. Luther's Bible 
— the noblest version in the land after God's own ver- 
sion, the Hebrew — remains as his richest bequest to 
his country. Luther's Catechism trains every Pro- 
testant German child for admission to the church. To 
Martin Luther's hymnal the German nation has 
marched to battle; and to-morrow his magnificent 
* Ein feste Burg' will make the rafters roar from Ham- 
burg to Bohemia. When, a few weeks since, the 
Kaiser William dedicated that colossal statue * Ger- 
mania' to keep its watch on the Rhine, he might fitly 
have carved on it the name of the great Reformer, 
above even the brilliant names of Von Moltke and 
Bismarck. The dead hand of Luther led the armies 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



20 1 



that swept the fields of Saarbruck and Sedan ; the 
ghost of Gustavus Adolphus rode in the ranks of the 
Protestant conquerors. 

** Luther's peasant origin was one element of his 
power, for it gave him his racy Saxon dialect. Like 
our own Lincoln, he understood * the plain people,' 
and had Lincoln's homespun wit and idiomatic direct- 
ness. A scholar himself, he yet translated the Bible 
into the language of the fireside and the market-place, 
and thus made God's Book the people's book. Some- 
times, when his soul was roused to righteous wrath, 
his words were bludgeons. There are a few letters of 
his yet extant which are rather too coarse for publi- 
cation. The bowlings and chantings of the monks, he 
denounced as 'tongue-thrashing;' he addressed Em- 
ser as the 'he-goat of Leipsic;' and of malicious 
gossips he sharply said, * they are exactly like hogs, 
who do not care for the violets and roses in the gar- 
dens, but only to stick their snouts into the garbage.* 
The bravest thing Luther ever did after his defiance 
of the Papacy, was his marriage to the fugitive nun, 
Catherina von Bora. When questioned for his 
reasons, he answered in his racy Saxon fashion: 'I 
wanted to please my father, to tease the Pope, and to 
vex the devil.' Without this practical protest against 
the abominable doctrine of celibacy, he would have 
left his life-work incomplete. 

" The consummate gift and glory of that life-work 
was, of course, the Protestant Reformation. That 
was (under God) as truly his as the discovery of 
America belonged to Columbus. Other heroic men — 
Wycliffe, Huss, Jerome — started a revolt; Luther 
9* 



202 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

alone achieved a revolution. To his eye * Popery was 
a Satanic institution, the worst calamity that devils 
ever devised,' and he made it forever impossible for 
Popery to continue what it had been ; he smote off its 
horns. Other men have pulled down, and left only 
ruins, Luther pulled down, and then built up the 
magnificent structure which bears on its dome the 
name of Protestant underneath the name of Christ 
Jesus. ***** 

" When Luther was laid in the Schloss-kirche, Pro- 
testantism scarcely extended beyond Germany ; now 
it controls the destinies of four hundred millions of the 
human family. It runs in the blood of the strongest 
races — the races that invented steam-engines and the 
telegraph ; the races that rescued Holland from the sea 
and America from the savage ; the races that have given 
birth to John Knox and John Milton, to Newton and 
Leibnitz, to Washington and Lincoln and Gladstone. 
It runs in the blood of the races that shall rule the 
world. 

" Under God this was Luther's work ; it stamps him 
as the foremost character since the Apostolic era. 
Martin Luther's hammer struck the first strokes in the 
building of the Reformed Church of God. Martin 
Luther's bonfire kindled the flame of freedom, which 
has lighted four centuries of religious progress. Mar- 
tin Luther's heaven-sent message — 'The just shall live 
by faith ' — ushered in a second Pentecost of spiritual 
power. The Omniscient Eye foresaw all this; the 
Omnipotent Arm therefore made strong the solitary 
Saxon monk, so that in the decisive hour he could 
ring out his defiant answer to the powers of darkness, 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 203 

• — ' Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise ; God help 
me! Amen!'" — Memorial Service at Princeton College. 

FREDERIC H. HEDGE, 

Of Harvard University, and author of " Prose Writers of Germany." 

"The power which presides over human destiny 
and shapes the processes of history is wont to conceal 
its ulterior purpose from the agents it employs, who, 
while pursuing their special aims, and fulfilling their 
appointed tasks, are, unknown to themselves, initiating 
a new era, founding a new world. 

" Such significance attaches to the name of Luther, 
one of that select band of providential men who stand 
conspicuous among their contemporaries as makers of 
history. For the Protestant Reformation which he 
inaugurated is very imperfectly apprehended if con- 
strued solely as a schism in the church, a new depart- 
ure in religion. In a larger view, it was our modern 
world, with its social developments, its liberties, its 
science, its new conditions of being, evolving itself 
from the old. 

*' It would be claiming too much to assume that all 
of good which distinguishes these latter centuries from 
mediaeval time is v/hoUy due to that one event ; that 
humanity would have made no progress in science and 
the arts of life, but for Luther and his work. Other 
contemporary agencies, independent of the rupture 
with P^ome — the printing-press, the revival of letters, 
the discovery of a new continent, and other geographi- 
cal and astronomical findings — have had their share in 
the regeneration of secular life. 

"But this we may safely assert: that the dearest 



204 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER, 



goods of our estate — civil independence, spiritual 
emancipation, individual scope, the large room, the 
unbound thought, the free pen, whatever is most char- 
acteristic of this New England of our inheritance — we 
owe to the Saxon Reformer in whose name we are 
here to-day. ******* 

" I have presented our hero in his character of 
reformer. I could wish, if time permitted, to exhibit 
him in other aspects of biographical interest. I would 
like to speak of him as a poet, author of hymns, into 
which he threw the fervor and swing of his impetuous 
soul ; as a musical composer, rendering in that capacity 
effective aid to the choral service of his church. I 
would like to speak of him as a humorist and satirist, 
exhibiting the playfulness and pungency of Erasmus 
without his cynicism ; as a lover of nature, anticipating 
our own age in his admiring sympathy with the beau- 
ties of earth and sky; as the first naturalist of his day, 
a close observer of the habits of vegetable and animal 
life ; as a leader in the way of tenderness for the brute 
creation. I would like also, in the spirit of impartial 
justice, to speak of his faults and infirmities, in which 
Lessing rejoiced, as showing him not too far removed 
from the level of our common humanity. 

" But these are points on which I am not permitted 
to dwell. That phase of his life which gives to the 
name of Luther its world-historic significance is com- 
prised in the period extending from the year 1 5 1 7 to 
the year 1529; from the posting of the ninety-five 
theses to the Diet of Spires, from whose decisions 
German princes dissenting received the name of 
Protestants, and which, followed by the league of 
Smalcald, assured the success of his cause. * * * 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



205 



" Honor and everlasting thanks to the man who 
broke for us the spell of papal autocracy; who rescued 
a portion, at least, of the Christian world from the par- 
alyzing grasp of a power more to be dreaded than any 
temporal despotism — a power which rules by seducing 
the will, by capturing the conscience of its subjects — 
the bondage of the soul ! Luther alone, of all the men 
whom history names, by faith and courage, by all his 
endowments — ay, and by all his limitations — was fitted 
to accomplish that saving work — a work whose full 
import he could not know, whose far-reaching conse- 
quences he had not divined. They shape our life. 
Modern civilization, liberty, science, social progress, 
attest the world-wide scope of the Protestant reform, 
whose principles are independent thought, freedom 
from ecclesiastical thrall, defiance of consecrated wrong. 
Of him it may be said, in a truer sense than the poet 
claims for the architects of the mediaeval ministers, 
* He builded better than he knew.' Our age still obeys 
the law of that movement whose van he led, and the 
latest age will bear its impress. Here, amid the phan- 
toms that crowd the stage of human history, was a 
•grave reality, a piece of solid nature, a man whom it is 
impossible to imagine not to have been: to strike 
whose name and functions from the record of his time, 
would be to despoil the centuries following, of grains 
that enrich the annals of mankind." — Mass. Hist. 
Soc'y's Memorial Meetings held at Boston, Nov. 10, 
and published in Dec. No. of Atlantic Monthly. 



2o6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

THOMAS ARMITAGE, 

Pastor of Fifth- Avenue Baptist Church, New York. 

" It would require a volume to detail the changes 
that the gigantic power of the man has wrought in the 
religion and institutions of the world. He was not 
the father of the Reformation, but he was much the 
mightiest spirit that shaped its course and destiny. At 
the time he began his work, cupidity, ignorance and 
profligacy marked the clergy from the papal throne 
down. John Huss, Savonarola, John Wycliffe, and 
others had risen to repair the ruined fabric, but their 
labors had been prostrated. The age demanded that 
the man whom God had provided for the age should 
step forth in his own original greatness, arouse his 
own master-spirit, and lead the nations. Such a soul 
must not be formed by the age or he would bear its 
image. No genius, but only a special creation of God, 
could free and consecrate a world. Public opinion has 
stopped a conqueror, broken a tyrant, overthrown a 
corrupt institution ; but more frequently it has advo- 
cated, not oppressed, virtue and defended vice. Public 
opinion — in the church or out of it — on religious ques- 
tions is of very little consequence. To this point 
Luther had to be educated before he could undertake 
the leadership in such times as he lived in. The pub- 
lic opinion of that empire which Luther made great 
denounced him as a madman filled with blasphemy; 
as not a man, but Satan with the form of a man. But 
Luther had the qualifications necessary for the work 
before him. He began the Reformation by reforming 
himself He made the Bible the first agent in the 
Reformation; he himself was the second. Blot out 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 207 

Luther's name from history, and you must write an- 
other destiny for Holland, England and America, as 
well as Germany." 

ROBERT COLLYER, 

Pastor of the Church of the Messiah, New York, chose as the subject 
of his discourse on Sunday, November ii, " Our Saint Martin?^ 

"These are 'the three things I love to find in my 
good Saint Martin Luther. First, there is so much 
pure manhood in him that he could be in his one life 
a vast and sure believer, and deep and dire doubter ; 
gentle as a mother with her little children, and angry 
as Michael with his sword; able to fast until you co'uld 
count all his bones, and the threads of life began to 
snap, able to feast royally when that was the order 
of the day, but still to be a man and not less than a 
saint in his feasting. Second, he held as brave a soul 
as this world ever had, in a coward's body, or some- 
thing very like it — a body that would shake and trem- 
ble in the presence of shadow of death, but durst not 
give way and follow the white feather in clear sight of 
the rack and the flame. Third, with the instincts of a 
bigot uppermost now and then, not always able to 
stand free and walk free in the way of truth, at the 
innermost center of his heart he was a free-thinker and 
a free man, and would have no man follow Luther, 
but only God and his Christ; would not let the Bible, 
even, become an object of blind idolatry, but would 
have all men bring their minds to its study and dis- 
tinguish between the wheat and the straw. There is 
still another quality I love in my good St. Martin — my 
Saint of the new tenor and the new life. * * * 



2o8 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

He began by taking his oath on all the sacraments 
that he would never marry nor have a home of his 
own and children. The day came when he saw that 
he had lied against his own nature and his own soul 
in doing this, found a woman who had also taken this 
oath and found that she had forsworn herself, married 
that woman, and they made a home, and had children 
born to them. And with all his doubts and fears, 
misbeliefs and unbeliefs, I have not found the day 
or the moment of his life when my good saint said he 
was sorry for that — else he should not be my saint, after 
all I have said for his canonization. In one word, he 
loved all things lovely, and so he is for this last lovely 
reason my good Saint Martin." 

JOSEPH A. SEISS, 

Pastor of the Church of the Holy Communion, Philadelphia. 

** The central element of Luther's greatness was his 
amazing/^////. What Samson was in muscle, Luther 
was in soul. He was another Hannah's son in the 
strength and victory of his prayers. That mighty prin- 
ciple, which looks at things unseen, which launches out 
unfalteringly upon hidden realities, which joins men 
to omnipotence and transfigures them into sacred 
heroes, rose to sublime proportions in him. He lived 
on the Word of God. His perpetual and close com- 
munion with the Eternal Spirit, whose instrument he 
was, enabled him to lay his hands upon the throne, 
and lifted him into a wealth of light, energy, endurance 
and command, which made him one of the phenomenal 
wonders of humanity. 

Out of his faith sprang his prodigious daring; and 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 209 

daring, especially in the name and strength of God, is 
the life of power, the soul of heroism, the impulse of 
new creation. The guiding-star of human advance- 
ment is daring. Paul dared, and a world-wide classic 
paganism received its death-wound. Columbus dared, 
and the earth gloried in a new hemisphere. And that 
the Reformation should come, it was not enough that 
Huss should anticipate it; that Savonarola should 
preach it; that Reuchlin should write about it; that 
Erasmus should advise it; that Frederick should 
desire it; that Zwingli and Calvin should hail and 
help it; that the soul of suffering Christendom should 
yearn for it; there had to be a Luther to dare it. To 
brave all risks, to persist, to be self-faithful, to grapple 
with destiny, to surprise defeat by despising its terrors, 
to confront unrighteous power, to defy intoxicated 
triumph, to hold on hard amid tempest and thunder 
— is the example nations need, and the light that 
electrifies them. And such was the puissant fire in 
Luther's bones, kindled and fed by the clearness and 
transcendant vigor of his faith, making the 7nan of the 
modern ages. 

" As the impersonation of one of the greatest revolu- 
tions of time, we look in vain for another with whom 
to compare him. Nor is it too much to say that he 
was a Peter and a Paul (inspiration excepted), a Soc- 
rates and an ^sop, a Chrysostom and a Savonarola, 
a Shakespeare and a Whitfield, all condensed in one. 

" A lone man, all whose days were spent in poverty ; 
who could withstand the mighty Vatican and all its 
flaming bulls; whose influence evoked and swayed 
successive diets of the empire; whom repeated edicts 



210 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

from the imperial throne could not crush ; whom the 
talent, eloquence, and towering authority of the Roman 
hierarchy assailed in vain ; whom the attacks of kings 
of state and kings of literature could not disable; 
whose teachings the greatest General Council the 
Church of Rome ever held, sitting i8 years, could not 
counteract, nor adjourn without conceding much to 
him ; and whose name the greatest and most enlight- 
ened nations of this earth hail with glad acclaim; 
necessarily must have been a wonder of a man. 

" To begin with a minority consisting of one, and 
conquer kingdoms with the mere sword of his mouth 
— to bear the anathemas of church and the ban of 
empire, and triumph in spite of them — to refuse to fall 
down before the golden image of the combined 
Nebuchadnezzars of his time, though threatened with 
the burning fires of earth and hell — to turn iconoclast 
of such magnitude and daring as to think of smiting 
to pieces the gigantic idol of principalities and powers 
— nay, to attempt this, and to succeed in it — evinced a 
sublimity of heroism and achievement explainable 
only in the ordination of God, set to reform the ages. 

" Many and glowing are the eulogies which have 
been pronounced upon him; and yet we hear the 
philosopher of history, even from the side of Rome, 
giving it as his conviction that ' few of his own dis- 
ciples appreciate him highly enough.' Genius, learn- 
ing, eloquence, and song, have volunteered their noble 
efforts to do him justice ; centuries have added their 
light and testimony; half the world, in its enthusiasm, 
has urged on the inspiration ; but the story, in its full 
dimensions, has not yet been adequately told. The 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 2II 

skill and energy of other generations will yet be taxed 
to give it, if, indeed, it ever can be given apart from 
the illuminations of eternity." 

RICHARD S. STORRS, {Congregationalist) 

Of New York. 

" Luther's common sense was vast. He had won- 
derful sagacity in reading political conditions. He 
had a poetic spirit, which wrought itself out in actions 
rather than words ; also a power of rugged eloquence, 
and an immense capacity for labor. All these were 
combined with varied and extended learning in He- 
brew, Greek, Latin, and German. He was a man of 
the people ; humorous, fond of music, and affectionate, 
and without the least sanctimoniousness ; fond of gar- 
dening, fond of games. Associated with this was a 
devoutness of spirit and great courage. He was a 
typical German ; he loved the common people. All 
his personality went into his work. He never could 
write or preach so well as when he was angry. Now 
think of the results. Civil and religious liberty in 
Germany, widening in France, and extending over all 
the world." 

PHILLIPS BROOKS, (^Episcopalian) 
Of Boston. 

"The noblest monument of modern Europe stands 
in the old town of Worms, erected fourteen years ago 
in memory of the man who was born in Eisleben at 
nine o'clock on the evening of the loth of November, 
1483, four hundred years ago last Saturday night. In 
the centre of the group stands the stately efligy of 



212 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

Martin Luther overtopping all the rest, and around 
him are assembled the forerunners, the supporters and 
the friends of him and of the Reformation which must 
always be most associated with his name. Savona- 
rola, Wickliffe, Huss and Waldo, Frederick the Wise 
and Philip the Magnanimous, Philip Melanchthon and 
John Reuchlin ; the city of Augsburg, with her palm- 
branch; the city of Magdeburg, mourning over her 
desolation, and the city of Spires, holding forth her 
famous protest — all of these sit or stand in imperish- 
able bronze around the sturdy Doctor who was the 
master of them all. 

** That monument at Worms but represents and ut- 
ters the vivid memory in which the great Reformer is 
held not merely in Germany, but through all the world 
of Protestantism. The approach of the anniversary of 
his birth has been greeted with an overwhelming wel- 
come. The old German towns in which he lived have 
reproduced in pageants and processions the pictures 
of his life. Plis unforgotten face has come back once 
more to a thousand homes. His books have been re- 
read. His faults and virtues have been re-discussed. 
His place and power in history have been estimated 
anew ; and the whole great portion of the world which 
has been blessed through him has thanked God once 
again that he was born. 

"At such a time the voice of the Protestants of 
America could not be silent. It has not failed to 
speak in many ways, and now to-night we have assem- 
bled at the summons of the Evangelical Alliance to do 
honor to the memory of Martin Luther, and to think 
together of what he was and did. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 213 

"We are to think of one of the grecftest men of 
human history. I say advisedly one of the greatest 
ine7t; for at the outset we ought to reahze that it is 
the personahty of Luther, afire with great indignations, 
believing in great ideas, writing books which in some 
true sense are great books, doing great, brave, inspiring 
deeds ; but carrying all the while its power in itself, in 
his being what he was — it is the personality of Luther 
which really holds the secret ofhis power. It is he that 
men hate and love with ever fresh emotion, just as they 
loved and hated him four centuries ago. His books 
were burnt, but the real object of the hate was he. 
His pamphlets, scattered broadcast over Germany, 
were read, and praised, and treasured; but the real 
love and loyalty, and looking up for power, was to 
him. Indeed, the name and fame of Luther coming 
down through history under God's safe-conduct, has 
been full of almost the same vitality, and has been at- 
tended by almost the same admiration and abuse, as 
was the figure of Luther in that famous journey which 
took him in his rude Saxon wagon from Wittenberg 
to Worms when he went up to the Diet ; and at Leip- 
sic, Nurnberg, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Frankfurt, the 
shouts of his friends and the curses of his enemies, 
showed that no man in Germany was loved or hated 
as he was. 

" It is this vigorous and personal manhood which is 
the strength of Luther, and if we analyze it a little we 
can see easily enough out of what two elements it was 
made up, or more properly, perhaps, in what two chan- 
nels it ran and made its strength effective. Both are 
distinctively religious. There are two sentences out 



214 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



of two parables of Jesus which describe indeed the two 
components of the strongest strength of all religious 
men. One is this from the parable of the vineyard: 
' When the time of fruit grew near the lord of the vine- 
yard sent his servants to the husbandmen that they 
might receive the fruit of the vineyard ; ' and the other 
is the cry of the returning prodigal: *I will arise and 
go to my father.' Put these two together into any 
deep and lofty soul (you cannot put them into any 
other), and what a strength you have ! The conscious- 
ness of being sent from God with a mission for which 
the time is ripe, and the consciousness of eager return 
to God, of the great human struggle after Him, pos- 
sessing a nature which cannot live without Him — the 
imperious commission from above and the tumultuous 
experience within — these two, not inconsistent with 
each other, have met in all the great Christian work- 
ers and reformers who have moved and changed the 
world. These two lived together in the whole life of 
Luther. The one spoke out in the presence of the 
Emperor at Worms : the other wrestled unseen in 
the agonies of the cloister cell at Erfurt. The broad 
and vigorous issue of the two displayed itself in the 
exalted but always healthy and generous humanity 
which, with pervasive sympathy, filled and embraced 
all the humanity about it, not as persuasions or convic- 
tions — that would not have worked any such result — 
but as the living forces which exalted and refined, and 
consecrated and enlarged, a nature of great natural 
nobility and richness. So it was that the sense of the 
divine commission and the profoundness of the human 
struggle created the Luther who shook the thrones ot 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 215 

Pope and Caesar, and made all Europe new. You 
need only look into the faces of Hans Luther and his 
wife Margaret, which hang, painted by Lucas Cranach, 
in the Luther Chamber at the Wartburg, and you will 
see how you have only to add the fine fire of a real- 
ized commission and a remembered struggle to the 
rugged German strength of the father and the human 
sweetness in the mother's eyes, and you will have the 
full life of their great son. * * * * 

" Some men are events. It is not what they say or 
what they do, but what they are, that moves the world. 
Luther declared great truths ; he did great deeds ; and 
yet there is a certain sense in which his words and 
deeds are valuable only as they showed him, as they 
made manifest a son of God living a strong, brave, 
clear-sighted human life. It is thus that I have spoken 
of him so far, feeling his presence still through the 
deep atmosphere of these four hundred years. It is 
not certainly as the founder of any sect; more, but not 
mostly, it is as the preacher of certain truths ; but most 
of all it is as uttering in his very being a re-assertion 
of the divine idea of humanity, that he comes with this 
wonderfully fresh vitality into our modern days. * * 

"But there is more to say than that. These centu- 
ries of Anglo-Saxon life made by the ideas of Luther 
answer the question. The Protestantism of Milton 
and of Goethe, of Howard and of Franke, of Newton 
and of Leibnitz, of Bunyan and of Butler, of Words- 
worth and of Tennyson, of Wesley and of Channing, 
of Schleiermacher and of Maurice, of Washington and 
of Lincoln, is no failure. We may well dismiss the 
foolish question, and with new pride and resolve 



2i6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

brighten afresh the great name of Protestant upon our 
foreheads. 

" Have we not seen to-day something of what 
Protestantism really is — the Protestantism which can- 
not fail ? Full of the sense of duty and the spirit of 
holiness, there stands Luther — moralist and mystic. 
Conscience and faith are not in conflict, but in lofty 
unison in him. Through him, because he was that, 
God's waiting light and power stream into the world, 
and the old lies wither and humanity springs upon its 
feet. Ah, there is no failure there. There cannot be. 
The time will come — perhaps the time has come — 
when a new Luther will be needed for the next great 
step that humanity must take; but that next step is 
possible mainly because of what the Monk of Witten- 
berg was and did four hundred years ago. There is no 
failure there : only one strain in the music of the eternal 
success — fading away but to give space for a new and 
higher strain. 

" It may be that another Luther is not likely. It 
may be that the freer atmosphere in which the world 
is henceforth to live will give no chance for such ex- 
plosions as in the sixteenth century burst open the 
tight walls of papal power. Perhaps not by the 
apparition of one great leader, but by the steady 
upward movement of the inspired whole, the future 
great advances of humanity are to be made. No man 
can say; but this at least is sure, that the great princi- 
ples of Martin Luther's life must be the principles of 
every advance of m.an on to the very end. Always it 
must be by a regeneration of humanity. Always it 
must be by the power of God filling the soul of man 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



217 



Always it must be religious. Always it must be God 
summoning man, man reaching after God. Always it 
must be the moralist and the mystic, conscience and 
faith meeting in the single human hero or in humanity 
at large, which makes the Reformation. And how- 
ever it shall come, all human progress must remember 
Martin Luther. 

"Every reformation until man comes to his per- 
fection will be easier and surer because of this great 
Reformer whom we have been honoring, for whom we 
have been thanking God, to-day. Every return of 
man, rebellious against sin or worldiness or false 
authority, into a more simple and devout obedience to 
the God to whom he belongs, will remember with 
gratitude and find strength in remembering brave 
Martin Luther. The echo of the shouts which rang 
at Wittenberg while the pope's Bull was burning, the 
echo of the trumpets which the watchman on the 
tower blew when Luther entered into Worms, will be 
heard, if men listen for them, in the farthest and latest 
of the ever-repeated chimes which, until the Light and 
the Lord have perfectly possessed the earth, shall 
again and again 

" Ring out the Darkness of the world, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, 

The celebrated Ne^v England literateur and humorist. 

" The city of Hartford, the State of Connecticut, the 
United States, Great Britain and its world-encirclrng 
colonies, Holland and its dependencies, the German 
empire, are to-day what they are largely because of the 



2l8 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

life of Martin Luther. * Had there been no Luther,' 
says Mr. Froude, ' the Enghsh, American and German 
peoples would be thinking differently, would be acting 
differently, would be altogether different men and 
women from what they are at this moment.' This city 
of Hartford, supposing it in existence without the Re- 
formation, would have been a different place from what 
it is — different in its social, literary, religious and civil 
economy. There is not a person in this audience who 
is what he would have been but for the influence of 
Luther. We may say this at any time of all preceding 
influences, of all great writers and actors in the world 
— they change human life after them more or less ; but 
no man I think has affected it so largely since the fall 
of the Roman Empire as Luther. There would prob- 
ably have been a Reformation, though not at the time 
it did occur, without him ; but it would have been dif- 
ferent in its character. Without him at that time it 
would probably have resulted in a compromise, and a 
compromise which years would have shown surren- 
dered that which we now regard as vital in the Refor- 
mation. It needed exactly such a fighter as Luther 
to win the battle in the great movement of the i6th 
century, and such a conservative as Luther to keep 
the movement within bounds. 

" Fortunately Luther was endowed with physical 
force and moral courage equal to his spiritual. For 
it is a lesson of history that evil and force often 
triumph, that persecutions of good causes are often 
pushed so far as to crush them, that progress is stayed 
by violence. The success of good movements depends 
often on physical force. Protestantism lost its chance 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



219 



of making Bavaria Protestant by the defeat at White 
Hills in 1620. The Reformation was stifled in France 
by the strong hand. There come times when the 
right, or what men deem to be right, moral and spirit- 
ual freedom, has to be fought for with cruel weapons, 
or at least with the forces inherent in the physical 
nature. The struggle of the Reformation in Germany 
demanded other qualities beside learning and spiritu- 
ality. And it found them in Luther. 

" Hosts of men have been great in certain directions ; 
not more than one or two in a generation great all 
round. When such an one does appear in human 
affairs he needs room, he takes it, he profoundly 
influences his age, and makes an indelible mark on the 
race. Luther seems to me, looking not only at what 
he accomplished, but studying the man himself in his 
individual qualities, to be the greatest force, perhaps 
the most completely developed man, in modern times. 
He was like a magnificent iron steamship, with the 
engines adequate to the hull. His genius had the 
physical basis necessary to make him the complete 
man. He was strong in his energy, strong in his 
passions, in his affections, in his love, in his spiritual 
aspirations, in his will, in his convictions. There were 
greater scholars, poets, men of affairs ; but Luther was 
so evenly developed in his powers that success might 
be predicted of him in any special direction he chose 
to exert them. He had the capacity to have made 
himself the preeminent man of letters and the national 
poet of his time. In the few words I have to say of 
him, I have been asked to consider his services to 
literature. ***** 



220 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

"The Table Talk is full of originality, common 
sense, individual character, and not seldom noble ele- 
vation of discernment of things spiritual and mundane. 
It is the overflowing of a man of genius, whose brain 
was never idle, but to whom literature and the fashion 
of this world were only incidents in his stormy and 
glorious struggle to clear a place for a free man to 
stand in Germany, and to break the bondage imposed 
on the Christian world." — In Park Churchy Hartford ^ 
Conn., Nov. ii, 1883. 

DAVID SWING, 

The celebrated preacher of Chicago. 

" But what shape did the Christian church assume 
under the touch of Luther? Under the persistence 
and force of this one monk, the religion of the six- 
teenth century opened its old iron and rusty doors to 
admit three new ideas, and to exclude ideas enough to 
make room for these. The first in the order of time 
and excellence was salvation by faith instead of by 
works. It is said by some writers that in some hour 
of deep anxiety over the way of salvation, there came 
into his mind as a lightning flash the revelation that 
the just shall live by faith. Faith being something 
within, it was the opposite of the idea of indulgences 
— that man could be saved by something from with- 
out. Salvation by paying money to the pope was the 
exact opposite of the new thought of purity and charity 
within. God in the soul was to take the place of the 
pope on the outside. Having visited Rome, and 
having found a city of external religious splendor, 
but of internal vice and crime, Luther's already bur- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 221 

dened heart gave way, and his day of opposition and 
heroism began. It was at this point the piety of the 
monk came to the help of the world ; for had not this 
discoverer of an internal religion been also a lover of 
it, little would have come of the new truth. Many 
mentally perceive the need of a God-like character, 
but do not love holiness enough to make a struggle 
to acquire it and lead others m its pursuit. Our great 
Webster perceived the value of universal freedom, but 
he did not love the thought enough to die for any 
emancipation of slaves. Washington and Jefferson 
perceived that the blacks should be set free, but this 
mental perception did not burst forth in a flame of 
love and action. Their liberty was on a canvas as a 
beautiful picture, or in marble as an impressive image, 
but it did not imitate the marble of Pygmalion by be- 
ginning to breathe and move. It was in the later 
years of Lincoln, and Chase, and John Brown the 
fanatic, and a million soldiers, that the love for man 
arose as high in the heart as the thought of liberty 
had risen in the brain, Luther combined the thinker 
and the lover : and while he perceived the logical 
value of a spiritual religion, he bowed daily in prayei 
and girded himself for battle. He surpassed our Web- 
ster, because to the intellectual grasp of a great idea 
he added the storm-power of a hero. The reformation 
came, not from the superior mind of Luther, but 
equally from his inflamed heart. * * * * 

" A second idea which came into the church in the 
sixteenth century was personal liberty. * * * 

" The third great blessing which followed the storm 
of the sixteenth century, was the exaltation of learn- 

\X\CT '^ ^ '^ *** ^ ^ ^ 



222 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

SAMUEL DOMER, 

Of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Washington, D. C. 

"Some think the scene at Worms, when Luther 
stood before that imf>erial parliament in his royal re- 
sponse to the papal demands, the sublimest one in the 
history of the Reformation. I do not know that it is. 
There are many stirring scenes in that history, and 
Worms is grandly tragic ; but the Wartburg in its inti- 
mate connection with that scene, and in its sublime 
significancy to the new era, the spiritual renaissance, can 
hardly be secondary to that of Worms. The Wartburg 
is literally a mountain summit; and, meaningfully, it 
is one of the highest peaks of human achievements 
and influence. There Luther rises into the imperial- 
ism of his lofty mission. He stands face to face with 
the Angel of the Apocalypse, and the 'pure word of 
God,' laid into his hands, is sent down through Ger- 
many and the world, setting kingdoms aflame with the 
new evangelism, and lighting up the pathway of sal- 
vation to the millions that were sitting in the darkness 
and shadow of death. Paint the two pictures ; put 
into that conclave of kings, princes, and ecclesiastical 
nobilities all the grandeur and glamor of pomp and 
power ; then, central in the picture, place the solitary 
man, and arm him with more than Ithuriel's spear, 
as he stands in sublime defiance of imperial and papal 
power, and the hoary heresies of a thousand years ! 
The picture starts our wonder and admiration. But 
the Wartburg — paint that ! Let that mountain loom 
up before us high and towering; let the dark forests 
of Thuringia around its base and on its sides type out 
the darkness of the Middle Ages, out of which the 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



223 



great Reform is now emerging ; cover those mountain 
slopes far up to summit with the blackest clouds, in 
which the lightnings dance and the thunders make 
their home ; let these be types of the tempests in which 
the Reformer lifts up his head and stretches forth his 
hands ; make the dark clouds inky black with ignor- 
ance, superstition, bigotry, religious hate, and every en- 
venomed passion of political and ecclesiastical malevo- 
lence ; — but overhead, where the bold, brave man 
stands, calmer far than Ajax in the storm, let the 
clouds be riven; let a glory of amber and gold bathe 
that mountain peak with a heavenly radiance, then 
crowd that glory with the angels of God singing as 
they shine, a new-born version of the old anthem 
brought from Judean hills, ' Glory to God in the 
Highest!' This the Wartburg. It lies along the 
march of victory! Luther in veritable apotheosis, 
through the reflected glory, which the Word of God 
flings back upon him as he sends it flaming down the 
ages!" — November 11, 1883. 

C, F. W. WALTHER, 

President and Professor in Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary 
at St. Louis, Mo. 

"We have no reason to be ashamed of the per- 
son Luther. On the contrary, we have the strongest 
reasons to glory in him, in defiance of the slanders of 
the papists. His unfeigned piety, his invincible trust 
in God, his dauntless heroism in the presence of dan- 
ger, his unremitting diligence in prayer and supplica- 
tion, his genuine meekness and simplicity, his trans- 
parent disinterestedness far removed from avarice and 



224 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



the love of money, his tender sympathy for all the 
sorrowing, his beneficence ever flowing freely for all 
who were in need, his sincerity utterly averse to the 
ways of the flatterer and of the hypocrite, his candor 
that marked his intercourse with the lofty and the 
lowly, his sobriety, his abstinence, his purity, his self- 
consuming diligence, his faithfulness as son, as hus- 
band, as father, as preacher, as professor, as friend, as 
counselor, as citizen — in a word, his full exemplary 
piety, all together present a model of true Christianity 
that may command the admiration, and is worthy of 
the imitation of all subsequent times. Further, we 
have abundant reason to boast of Luther's exalted 
gifts, and of the use he made of them ; of his profound 
wisdom, his extraordinary learning, his penetrating 
judgment, his commanding eloquence, his fine poetic 
inspiration, his incomparable services to the Church, 
the State and society at large, to art, to science, to our 
German name and our glorious German speech, and 
above all to the gigantic work of the Reformation, the 
triumph of which, under God, the Church owes to the 
faithfulness of Luther." 

A. L. FRISBIE, 

Pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, Des Moines, Iowa. 

" If there were any doubt as to whether the influ- 
ence of Luther be race-wide and world-wide, current 
facts would go far to satisfy the doubt. To-day Ger- 
many is swept by a tidal-wave of joyful recognition of 
what the child of Hans Luder became. She could not 
bring forward a name which represents so much to 
the German mind of the commanding, illustrious, and 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



225 



dear, as does the name of Martin Luther. Sweden, 
Norway and Denmark are scarcely behind Germany 
in enthusiastic observance of his anniversary; France, 
Holland, Switzerland and Italy join to honor him. 
England sets his name among those of her own most 
renowned. And North America, which has come out 
of the sea since Luther died, reads, and thinks, and 
sings of Luther. These facts show that the child 
Martin Luther has grown to be a mighty influence in 
the Christian lands of to-day. Protestant Christen- 
dom, forgetting sect and division, unites to honor one 
of the mightiest factors in the development of Protest- 
ant Christianity. So his birthday quickens the heart- 
beats, and sets thrilling within us, and vibrating upon 
the air, the songs, and prayers, and battle-words of the 
Reformation. The birthday of no other man born 
within the last 1500 years could suggest so much of 
that world's birthday at Bethlehem." 

A. J. HERR, 

Pennsylvania State Senator from 1 6th District. 

"Luther was not a religious reformer only; he was 
also a liberator of thought. Learning, then, was a 
sealed book to all but the rich, and those who intended 
to enter the Church. While it is true that many 
schools and universities were established and flour- 
ished, yet the favored few only could gain admission 
to them. Learning was claimed to be the special pro- 
perty of the superior class; it was believed to be the 
best thing to keep the common people in fear and 
ignorance, and that man was looked upon as danger- 
ous who thought that they had any right to the know- 



226 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ledge of the truth. But that was not Luther's way of 
thinking. He beheved they had a right to education, 
and was untiring in his efforts to estabhsh schools for 
their benefit. His translation of the Bible into his 
mother-tongue unlocked a storehouse of wisdom and 
poetry and sacred story which the common people re- 
ceived with gladness and surprise. It brought to their 
very doors what they had long yearned for. It did 
more to clarify the intellectual atmosphere and to 
stimulate the growing desire for learning which was 
sweeping over the nation like a wholesome influence, 
than perhaps any single circumstance of that age. His 
labors were incessant and almost incredible, throwing 
off letters and lectures and pamphlets and sermons 
with the ease and facility of a machine. He never 
stopped to polish a phrase or to veneer a thought. 
His heart was in his work, and that was the reason 
why he never wearied, but went straight on, uttering 
in strong, homely Saxon the intense convictions of his 
soul, and hurling his metal-like arguments through the 
ranks of his opponents like cannon balls crashing 
through the trees of a dead and dying forest. One of 
the consequences of this prodigious energy was to 
liberate the human mind, for it is true as Michelet, the 
French historian, said : * Who can estimate the grati- 
tude we owe him ? We can not think or write an hour 
without remembering him ; for to whom do I owe it 
that I can send forth what my pen has been recording, 
if not to Luther, the liberator of modern thought?' 
And this judgment is confirmed by an illustrious line 
of thinkers, orators and poets of every age. It would 
be a matter of profound astonishment if a man endowed 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



227 



with such quahties of mind and heart had not been a 
patriot in the truest sense of the word. But he was 
a patriot, and no self-seeking one either. He felt 
deeply for the people and with the people, in their 
suffering and distress, and sought in every way to lift 
them out of the mire into which they had been 
plunged by the rapacity of Church and state. In hot 
displeasure he exclaimed, * Wliat benefit would it be to 
the poor man if his field bore as many florins as grains 
of wheat, if everything is to be taken by his master to 
be squandered on fine castles, fine dresses, fine eating 
and drinking?' With the sure instincts of a statesman 
he predicted the revolt of the peasants a year before it 
occurred, and warned the authorities that * Government 
was not instituted for the benefit of the rulers, but for 
the advantage of the people.' That sounds as if it had 
been taken from the Declaration of Independence; but 
it was uttered three hundred years before that docu- 
ment was written or the first foundation-stone of this 
republic was laid. If he had lived here in 1776, his 
blood would have stained the snows of Valle}- Forge 
with the rest of those immortal heroes. 

"Across the gulf of four hundred years Luther 
sends greeting to this generation. The events of his 
life are fast and secure in the irrevocable past ; nothing 
can wrench them from the order they hold in the his- 
tory of the progress of mankind. * >k >^ 

" An old vrriter once wrote : * On the theatre of the 
world there have been many great men, some good 
men, but only a few both great and good.' It is the 
eminence of Luther that he was both great and good, 
his life-work striking- everlasting roots which leave 



228 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

perennial blossoms on his grave. His monument is 
the memory of mankind. Wherever conscience is 
free ; wherever man, poised on the axis of personal re- 
sponsibility, limited by nothing but the curve of moral 
law, lives to fulfill the possibilities of his creation; 
wherever there is deliverance from the tyranny of the 
past and hope for the future; wherever art, culture and 
religion make a trinity of virtues to refine and exalt 
true manhood — there, there will be found the imperish- 
able fame of Luther, the Reformer and Patriot." — 
Harrisburg, Pa., Nov. 23, 1883. 

M. RHODES, 

Pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church, St. Louis. 

"In no event of the Reformer's life do the great 
elements of his manhood and the excellence of his 
character appear to better advantage than before the 
Diet at Worms. 

" There was an illustration of animalism, a domi- 
nance of the lower faculties there : but not in Luther, 
nor in his righteous protest. He bore himself as be- 
came one whose cause needed no help from passions 
and methods that could only have proven a reproach 
to the truth, and paralyzed his claim. He was there 
to speak for God and the race, and he acted in clear 
view of his final account, which, to him at least, 
seemed near at hand. 

" His appeal was to the noblest faculties of the 
human soul, a tribute alike to that Word which is 
supreme, but not of any private interpretation, an 
acknowledgment of entire dependence upon the Holy 
Ghost sent to discover to the human soul the truth as 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 220 

it is in Jesus, and a proper recognition of the endow- 
ment which God has conferred on rational man. 

" Never was there a man more utterly unselfish, more 
sincere, or more entirely a martyr to the cause of God 
and the good of men. In the largest sense, Luther 
saved his life by losing it, and in the sixteenth century 
he towered above 'the sovereigns and warriors, 
statesmen and divines who were his contemporaries, 
his antagonists and his disciples;' and to-day, after the 
wrestle and triumphs of four centuries, Luther's name 
and work constitute the mightiest and best pulse in 
the progress of the race. 

" I do not propose now to enter upon any defence of 
Luther's moral character. He was not faultless, and 
no one was so conscious of it and deplored it so much 
as himself He did not live in an age eminent for 
godliness, but his own pure life was so marked an 
example in his time, that we may well leave others 
straightened for a stronger weapon to smirch his 
memory. 

" Luther's work — a tree of life whose leaves are heal- 
ing the nations to-day — is sufficient on this point. I 
speak only of those great moral faculties rooted in and 
inwrought with the truth of God, which made him the 
force he was in his great battling life, and more than 
ever is to-day. He had abundant and flattering op- 
portunity to gratify any selfish interest he might desire 
to serve; his distinction was great, his influence un- 
bounded; but in no single instance did he turn these 
to any selfish account. Rare man ! Magnificent man- 
hood! Could he honor God? Could he lift up the 
defamed cross of his Lord? Could he promote the 



230 



TRIBUTES TO LUTIIRR 



best interest and purest happiness of his fellow-crea- 
tures? It was what he desired, and for this he lived 
and died. What he wrought under God was not 
nearly so much any earthly reward of his as it is the 
splendid and imperishable heritage of the Church and 
the world to-day. What with his great yearning heart, 
and the tenderness that comes of the discipline of trial 
along with his masterly faith in, and communion with 
God, was it strange that he won the hearts of princes 
and people, and that his most formidable foes were 
abashed and awed before him? Great thoughts beat 
on that brain. God's inspiration charged that princely 
soul. 

" ' Chief o'er all the galaxy of lights, 

Which stud the firmament of Christian fame, 
Shone Luther forth — that miracle of men ! ' 

" I do not ask — Do we owe something to the Refor- 
mation? I say, rather, that through the mercy of God 
we owe all to it. There are those who look upon that 
movement as a rash, defiant, and expensive venture, 
meriting only the execration of the race ; there are 
others who can only regard it with indifference, and 
whose limited vision see only what they term its mis- 
takes. 

"Thousands and millions of voices roll upon us to- 
day, bearing a nobler and truer testimony. Luther 
uncovered and reset the foundations of every kingdom 
that makes our civilization the wonder of the world, 
and we shall serve our day and generation in some 
part as Luther served his, if we build thereon as we 
should. The Reformation was no calamity, still less 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 23 1 

a crime, as some would have us believe. It was one 
of the conquering events in the world's march to the 
final ripening. *>«**** >k 

" When Luther stood up at Worms, he struck for 
the highest liberty of the race. He it was who made 
the triumph of the American Revolution possible." — 
Nov. 10, 1883. 

GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, 

Pastor First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" Luther's mission was manifold. First, it was his 
mission to emancipate- the Bible. For, practically 
speaking, the Bible had been for centuries an im- 
prisoned book. Luther's recovery of it, like King 
Josiah's recovery of the Pentateuch which had been 
lost for centuries, was a startling event. His trans- 
lation of it into matchless German (a version which 
has won the highest praise even from Roman Catholic 
writers), laid the foundation for the reformed theology, 
ethics, and polity. Hitherto, through the mediaeval 
period, the canon of doctrine and the rule of life had 
been the decrees of councils and the decretals of 
popes ; henceforth the one supreme authority in these 
transcendent matters was the Word of God. 

" Again : It was Luther's mission to emancipate 
doctrine. For the Scriptural theology had become 
well nigh lost in the perversions and traditions and 
excrescences of ecclesiastical deliverances. Not that 
Luther was eminent as a theologian; the systema- 
tizing faculty was not his forte. But while Melanch- 
thon arranged and Calvin constructed, Luther brought 
the blocks, or rather, by removing the overlying rub- 



232 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

bish of centuries, showed where the divine quarry lay. 
His restoration of the apostohc theology has its most 
signal illustration in his recovery of the doctrine of 
Justification by Faith. We are all so familiar with 
this 'article of the standing or falling church' {ar- 
ticuhis stantis vel cadentis ecclesice) that I need not 
dwell on it. 

"Again: It was Luther's mission to emancipate 
conscience. It was one of the baneful fruits of the 
middle-age theology that it captured the individual 
conscience, turning it over into the custody of the 
Church, appointing the priest its jailor. Luther it was 
who opened the prison doors. The Spirit of that Lord 
before whose face he went forth in the power of Elijah 
was upon him ; and so he proclaimed deliverance to 
the captives, setting at liberty the oppressed, announ- 
cing the acceptable year of the Lord, even the jubilee 
of our God. Trained in the bitter school of a personal 
struggle and personal victory, he issued forth from the 
cloister of Erfurt, the assertor of an individual con- 
science, the champion of a personal morality. And if 
our excellent friends of the Roman Catholic Church 
enjoy to-day, in this Protestant land of their adoption, 
the privilege of building their own sanctuaries, and 
having their own clergy, and worshiping God accord- 
ing to their own consciences, with none to molest or 
make afraid, it is because that same Martin Luther, 
whom their own pope excommunicated as a heretic, 
but whose triumph no papal bull could avert, taught 
and maintained the Protestant, Apostolic doctrine of 
personal conscience, and so of personal freedom. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



233 



"Again: It was Luther's mission to emancipate the 
laity. For centuries they had been virtually taught to 
believe that no layman could approach God except 
through the mediation of a priest, and, therefore, that 
the distinction between layman and priest was a dis- 
tinction in essence as well as in form; a distinction on 
which the whole hierarchical system of Rome rests. 
But Luther, remembering how he himself, in his own 
bitterness of soul, had come directly to God without 
any intervention, save that of the one Mediator be- 
tween God and man — the man Christ Jesus, and had 
found peace in believing, struck a Titan blow at the 
distinction between priest and layman, declaring that 
the veil of the temple is still rent in twain, and that all 
believers, whether ministers or laymen, men or women, 
adults or children, are alike priests before God, having 
equal right of entrance into heaven's holy of holies. 

"Again: It was Luther's mission to emancipate 
worship. The prescribed liturgy of the church was in 
Latin ; a form of speech which in many countries was 
a dead language, and therefore unintelligible. Luther 
provided a liturgy in the mother-tongue, with his 
wonted clear sense expressly declaring that it should 
ever be pliable to circumstances. He also made spe- 
cial provision for the public reading of the Bible, 
preaching or expounding, and congregational singing. 
Himself both poet and musician, Luther was the father 
of the modern hymnology and psalmody, giving the 
people an opportunity to worship God for themselves 
and in their own vernacular, and thus resuscitating 
worship from the tomb of a dead language. 

" Once more, and comprehensively : It was Luther's 



234 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



mission to emancipate the latent or imprisoned convic- 
tions and yearnings of awaking Christendom. He 
was both the child and the sire of his epoch. For he 
lived in a great era, and was just enough greater than 
his age to be able to interpret the great Christian heart 
longing to achieve, it knew not how, a reformation, or 
rather a return to the purity of apostolic doctrine and 
life. And in organizing and guiding this return, his 
moderation was as marked as his dash. For it is a 
great mistake to conceive Luther as a reckless re- 
former or wandering iconoclast, bent on nothing but 
destroying. In respect to what was merely specula- 
tive or rubrical or incidental, he was too intensely prac- 
tical, and even traditional in his tendencies, to be a 
general iconoclast, saying, with characteristic quaint- 
ness, ' I am never for throwing away the old shoes till 
I have got new ones.' In fact, it was this very moder- 
ation, born of his naturally conservative instincts, 
which saddened his later years, as in the painful affair 
of Carlstadt. While fighting most uncompromisingly 
and to the very death every doctrinal and practical 
error of the Roman Catholic Church, he still believed 
that this Church was the lawful heir of the Apostolic ; 
and so, in respect to all that was incidental or kept the 
impress of the apostolic original, he to the very last 
clung to the Church of his fathers. Nevertheless, sur- 
veying his mission as a whole, it was a mission of re- 
formation, and so of destruction. Luther's true sym- 
bol, like that of his reforming prototypes John and 
Elijah, is the axe, evermore famous as the lifter-up of 
the axe in the thicket of the forest. And for this 
special mission he was, as we have seen, by nature, by 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 235 

training, and by circumstances, specially fitted. No 
man ever illustrated more finely the poet's saying : — 

" ' Great offices will have 
Great talents, and God gives to every man 
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, 
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall. 
Just in the niche he was ordained to fill.' " 

S. A. REPASS, 

President of Theological Seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 
at Salem, Va. 

"Among all the periods this side the Apostolic age, 
none stand out so prominently as the Reformation of 
the i6th Century; and in the firmament of the Church 
through all these ages, there is no name that shines 
with such a singular lustre as that of Martin Luther. 
A patient study of the times m which he lived, of his 
personal character and qualifications, of the work he 
accomplished, of his peculiar adaptation to all the 
varied circumstances of the age, leave no more place 
to doubt his election and commission of God than that 
of Isaiah or John. 

" The statement may occasion surprise, that next to 
that of the Divine Author of Christianity, Luther's 
birthday holds more prominence in the Christian world 
"than that of any amongst its thousands of heroes, and 
that during this year of 1883 more emphasis is being 
laid upon his life and work than has been upon any 
man of God since the age of the Apostles. The state- 
ment, we repeat, may excite surprise; but it is a fact, 
and a most significant one. 

" There must be some solid underlying reason for 



236 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

this unanimity of sentiment and action. A people may 
embrace a delusion, and for awhile follow ' a vain im- 
agination ;' but surely, after four hundred years, and 
these too embracing the most highly civilized and en- 
lightened in the history of our race — centuries marked 
by the most skeptical and thorough-going criticism of 
men and principles — after such a period, the general 
readiness to honor and to recognize the Leader and 
the principles of the Reformation is surely the most 
triumphant vindication of the man and his work. And 
at this late date the endeavor to impugn either is only 
surpassed in folly by those, who, after eighteen cen- 
turies, undertake to prove that Christianity is itself a 
delusion. 

" Luther presents himself to us, in the highest and 
best sense a truly representative man. He stands 
identified with the Reformation in a manner wholly 
unique. The movement gathered about him in a way 
at once so real and intimate that you cannot in fact 
separate the one from the other. * * * * yWs 
life and work sustained much more than a near relation 
to civilization and human liberty. It gave a living be- 
ginning, as well as a real impetus, to that slumbering 
germ, and placed it out in the clear warm sunlight of 
a pure, personal, renovated Christianity. Standing 
upon the threshold of the era of modern history, his 
name and life are inwoven with all the growth of the 
subsequent period; and in the midst of his gigantic 
and successful struggles with the multiform errors of 
the papacy, Luther appears the true hero of the ages — 
a very man of God and friend of the race. 

** Luther not only found and restored the truth, but 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



237 



he lived it. In him the Christian son, husband, father, 
citizen and pastor, were embodied. In studying his 
character, or that Indeed of any representative man, 
we cannot unduly emphasize the fact that he was the 
truest exponent of his work, and that in him the Re- 
formation had its best hving embodiment. Melanch- 
thon was the superior theologian, and surpassed him 
in the Christian grace of gentleness. He was inferior 
to Calvin in logical acuteness and consistency. But 
combined In him, in a manner wholly unique, were all 
those qualities of mind and heart which preeminently 
marked him the leader of men. Whether we study 
him as the patient translator of the Holy Scriptures 
on his Patmos, or as the earnest preacher and teacher; 
whether in the sick-room administering consolation to 
the afflicted and dying, or before the assembled power 
of the pope at Worms, he appears all in all the grand- 
est name in uninspired history, one whom the ages 
delight to honor." 

HENRY C. ROBINSON, 

Of Connecticut. 

" This man stands, in my thoughts, as a great eman- 
cipator of his race. 

" It is difficult for us of to-day, girt with freedom as 
by an atmosphere, and protected by the sweet majesties 
of constitutional law, to appreciate, even when we read 
of them, the chains and oppressions of that other day, 
tied upon human hands and human minds and human 
hearts. The assumptions of Imperial princes and im- 
perial pontiffs were unlimited, and were only endur- 
able because of their jealousies of each other. Foui 



238 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

and a half centuries earlier the great Gregory, Hilde- 
brand, had claimed for the head of the church the 
power to depose emperors and to absolve from their 
allegiance the subjects of wicked princes. At the end 
of the Fifteenth century the ecclesiastical machinery of 
the church was shot through and through with the 
lust of power. Bishoprics were no longer located in 
counties, but counties in bishoprics. The canon law 
was getting to be the supreme law of Christendom. 
In Luther's address to the German nobles he asked 
for these four things : Germany for the Germans, civil 
government uncontrollable by ecclesiastical authority, 
a married clergy, and a national system of education. 
Into the same places where he cast the pontifical 
decree, which was written to make him an outlaw, but 
which made him the first citizen of his world, was 
thrown a volume of the canon law. His doctrine of 
justification, whether philosophically true or not, 
hurled from the catapult of his raging eloquence, went 
far to break down the hierarchical and sacramental in- 
termediaries, which stood, as in solid masonry, between 
the individual soul and his God. Step by step, and by 
ways of overwhelming surprise to himself, but always 
following his ideas o truth, Luther at last reached the 
1 ispiration of Jesus for individual rights ; and, though 
his scientific theology never apprehended the Father- 
hood of God, and the Divine heritage of man, which 
Jesus taught, his great soul, broader and nobler than 
his education, wa ked u.ider the benedictions of the 
one truth and in the nobility of the other. * * 

" And now, where was the great personal power of 
this man ? This question is too far-reaching. Let me 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 239 

give but one of the many answers. It was because he 
was in all respects a man. He was full to the brim of 
human nature. Man is naturally patriotic, because he 
is born into government, and it is so within the univer- 
sal consciousness: Luther was a patriot of patriots. 
Dominion of Germany by Italy or Spain or France 
was to him intolerable. Man is naturally domestic, he 
is born into the family : Luther was intensly domestic, 
and sang the sweetest songs of home. Man is natur- 
rally religions, for he is born with a spiritual, trustful 
nature: Luther carried his reverence to obedience to 
the throne of the Infinite, and walked under His 
shadow in the burning sun and in His light by night. 
''And his courage, and faith, and enthusiasm, and 
sociality, and love of music, were manly. And his 
pugilism, and violence, and ill-temper, and other weak- 
nesses, were all human, too. The demonstrations of 
his violence seem to us shocking, but they were in the 
dialect of the age. The controversies of the great men 
of our age, of Newman, and Wesley, and Stanley, and 
Bushnell, and Swing, are in the dialect of a century 
whose manners are much nearer Gospel. Luther's 
grandeur is in his being a great, rough, noble piece of 
humanity. And here he takes hold of the whole family 
of man, for he touches the universal. The cynics and 
the unnaturals may be but partially great, but Shelley 
was in many senses a great poet, but Robert Burns, 
warbling his sweet lyric of pure husband-and-wife love, 
in the sixteen lines of 'John Anderson My Jo,' has 
reached a wider world than the other can ever touch. 
He told the universal story of true human nature, and 
if we go higher up to the supreme in literature, to the 



240 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



banks of the Avon, we shall find in Shakespeare a 
larger illustration of our thought. And once more, let 
us go to Palestine. Listen to the story of the Prodigal 
Son and of the publican at the temple ; to the sermon 
on the mount. Follow that career of love ! Lo ! we 
are at the feet of the Universal Man, whom no race 
nor age can call its own, for He fulfilled the humanity 
of all ages and all races." — Union Memorial Meetings 
Hartford, Conn. 

E. C. GORDON, 

Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Salem, Va. 

" He was a mighty river — not like the Nile, issuing 
from a single source; rather Hke the Mississippi, en- 
riched by a hundred streams having their springs in 
the countless hills and valleys of a continent. All the 
influences for good which had come down from the 
past served to swell Luther's greatness and power. 
From his parents he received a vigorous body, an 
unbending will, a capacious intellect, and a temper 
easily moved towards piety. The discipline of the 
times was harsh to severity. By this discipline he was 
hardened for contests from which men more deli- 
cately reared instinctively shrank. His peasant's blood 
brought him into full sympathy with the difficulties, 
trials, sorrows and cares of the masses. His clerical | 
profession brought him into intimate intercourse with 
the most cultivated men of his age. His dangers 
threw him much with soldiers. 

" In him met the coarseness of the clown and the 
high tone and bearing of the knight-errant. The pure 
stream of Pauline doctrine which had come down 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 



241 



through Augustine, gave him religious back-bone. 
The mystics fed him with their tender, imaginative 
piety. He was a cehbate and a man of family. He 
practiced all the arts of the ascetic, and was developed 
and strengthened by the duties, joys, anxiety of mar- 
riage and domestic life. The revival of learning en- 
riched him with the stores it brought from Athens and 
Alexandria, from Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, 
and Rome. The schoolmen taught him their methods, 
and his constant intercourse with the w^isest men of 
action showed him how to use yet not abuse the arts 
of the scholastic and the refinements of the logician. 
Court and camp, cloister and school, peasant and 
priest, politics and religion, all helped to make him 
what he was. Above all, and under all, and encom- 
passing all, God's grace, the Baptism of the Holy 
Ghost, gave him strength and movement. 

" Luther was no gentle meandering stream, gliding 
softly through banks crowned with flowers. His was 
the spirit and power of Elijah. Enriched, made great, 
by all these mighty influences, his love for God and 
man forced him on with headlong speed — a rushing 
torrent, sweeping much away, but also bearing in his 
resistless course untold blessings to the ends of the 
earth. 

" He is the first in time of that long line of learned 
commentators who have made the Word of God plain 
to the masses of the people. 

" He is the first in time and in power of that long 
line of eloquent preachers who, in modern times, 
have brought the truths of the gospel home to the 
hearts and consciences of men. 
II 



242 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



"He is the first of that long line of reformers, who, 
taking the truth from him, have learned and taught 
that all reformation in the church consists essentially 
in a revival of true religion in the lives of God's 
people. - 

" He is the first of that long line of modern wit- 
nesses who have proclaimed the supremacy of God's 
Word, the right of private judgment, the sacredness of 
a man's conscience, as he must answer for himself at 
the bar of God. 

"And because he is thus first, the whole Church in 
this four hundredth year of his birth honors his mem- 
ory and thanks God for his life and work. He belongs 
exclusively to no country, to no party, to no denom- 
ination. God gave him to his redeemed saints. To 
them he belongs. He is their minister. If the chief 
of all, it is because, like his Master, he has served 
them all. 

** It was once my privilege to stand on a hill-side in 
the city of Geneva, and look across the lake to Mount 
Blanc. On the right I saw the church in which Cal- 
vin preached, and below the church the school he 
founded. In front was a landscape as lovely as the 
eye of man ever looked upon. As I gazed in admira- 
tion, the sun sank slowly behind the western horizon. 
The hills and valleys across the lake were shrouded in 
gloom. Farther on, the mountains were still tinged 
with purple and gold; while in the distance Mount 
Blanc lifted his head grandly towards the heavens, and 
from his glistening summit flashed the glorious sun- 
light far and wide. 

" So on this occasion, I stand upon a Genevan plat- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 243 

form of theology and ethics. Born and reared in the 
church and school organized by John Calvin, I look 
back over these four centuries to the age which is now 
rapidly receding into the darkness of the past. The 
common men no longer appear. Time in his onward 
flight has left them dead, buried, and forgotten. They 
lie like the valleys after sunset in the gloaming. But 
as I gaze, I see the great men, like giant mountains, 
still living in the consciousness of this busy age. 
They still glow in the light w^hich they continue to 
reflect across the years to us. There are Melanchthon 
and Calvin ; there are Zwingli and Knox; there are 
others of lesser mould and stature standing out against 
the sky. But there is one higher, grander, nobler than 
the rest. His form is rugged; his character deeply 
furrowed by his contests w^ithin and w^ithout — with sin 
and the devil ; with Pope and Emperor ; with fanatic 
and w^orldling ; with skeptic and sensualist. It is get- 
ting late. Four hundred years have passed ; but the 
outline of this man is still clear and distinct, and he is 
yet flashing the glorious light of the gospel of the 
grace of God down the ages. 

" May that light continue to shine, reflected by men 
as good and as true, if not so great as Martin Luther, 
until the Lord come!" 

CHARLES W. SCHAEFFER, 

President of Philadelphia Theological Seminary (Lutheran). 

" No good picture of Luther can be drawn without 
presenting the lowliness of his origin, the splendor of 
his natural, talents, the rigor of his early training, the 
hardships of his youth, his tender conscience, his 



244 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



strong passions, his thorough acquaintance with all 
the teachings of Rome, his prayerful struggles to find 
salvation in those teachings, his utter and hopeless 
failure, his discovery of the Word of God, his accept- 
ing it as a voice from heaven, his indomitable courage 
in maintaining it at the peril of his life, his exhaustless 
enterprise, his unwearied industry in spreading abroad 
the knowledge of the Word among all people, so that 
the people's hearts might be everywhere aroused and 
enlisted for the truth, and thus the triumph of the 
truth be assured. 

"All these and other similar items are essential 
features of the man ; and with each separate element, 
so interesting in itself, the harmonious combination of 
the whole, in one single character, gives that charac- 
ter an extraordinary prominence in the first rank of 
illustrious and extraordinary men." 

WILLIAM L. GAGE, 

Of the First Baptist Church, Hartford, Conn. 

" It is no Christmas which we keep, no advent of 
one born without sin and living without offence, it is 
the birthday of a man strong in all that he was and 
did, so rough in speech, so violent in temper, so con- 
troversial in tone and pugnacious in opposition, that 
we never think of him as we do of the gentle and po- 
litic Melanchthon, but have a full sense of that which 
made his frailties. Yet we always think of him as 
wonderfully adapted by God for the hard piece of 
work which was laid out for him, and which he alone 
could do ; and we as distinctly see that he had a place 
in the Redeemer's kingdom as marked as that of 
Peter or Paul. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 245 

" Others will speak to you of this man's influence in 
literature, the beauty and strength which he gave to 
his mother-tongue, the impulse which he gave to free 
and independent thought, the value of the individual 
conscience and the individual life ; the honor which he 
claimed for music and poetry; the impulse which he 
gave to education and to classical learning ; the great 
humanity and heartiness of the man endearing him to 
all men. Luther has an hundred claims on us, and 
able men here and in other lands will voice them and 
honor them. For me in these introductory words, it 
remains to speak of him in what he was first and fore- 
most, a man of God. When he was professor of Latin 
in Wittenberg for a year and a half, he did not deem 
that he had reached his true work; not until he was 
in his theological chair did he conceive that he was 
where God placed him. And amid all that Luther 
was called to do that was great and commanding in 
relation to art, education, letters and free thought, I 
deem that the first place must be what he was to the 
church in rescuing and restoring certain great dogmas 
of religion, 

" We must not forget of Luther that he gave back 
to the church the great truth that man must approach 
his God empty-handed ar;d soul to soul, God's grace 
flowing forth freely to a repentant heart, and giving 
life and strength and peace and full forgiveness for the 
past. A doctrine like this, so large, so deep, so rich 
in its results in life, cannot be covered up without 
infinite loss. Luther found it hidden in forgotten 
books, in St. Paul's epistles, in the writings of St. 
Augustine and St. Bernard, but as good as lost to the 



246 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

experience of living men, and he tested it by a personal 
trial as searching as the 7th and 8th of Romans, and 
set it on high and made it again the great life principle 
of a living church. He found the Bible covered up 
and hidden by disputations which seemed to him 
trivial and peculiar. He took it out from the great 
rubbish heap and opened it, spreading its treasures 
out in the tongue of the peasant and not in the dialect 
of the learned, and gave to the world a book so fresh 
and inspiring, so exhaustless in its life and wisdom, 
that from that day to this it has been peerless. 

"We often speak of Luther's influence as limited 
and registered by Protestantism; and because the 
boundaries of Protestantism remain to-day precisely 
what they were when Luther died. It is often said 
that his work has not gone over them and beyond 
them. It would be a most interesting inquiry how 
far the Roman Catholic church has been modified by 
the Reformation. Doubtless very much in all respects. 
Its standard of doctrine may remain the same; its 
doctrine of papal infallibility, accepted in 1 871, would 
appear to imply that Luther's work was all in vain. 
But we know that it is not so. It is vain to imagine 
in our time any such recoil from the Roman Catholic 
church as was felt in the sixteenth century. We are 
all of us constantly discovering good things in that 
church. All religious ceremonies have a most pow- 
erful reaction upon each other ; and it would not be 
surprising if under disguises which we cannot pene- 
trate a work of reform is going forward as rapidly as 
in the old days of rough words and fiery onslaughts. 
I trust that it is, and that the work begun by that 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



247 



great, brotherly man four hundred years ago may go 
on and on long after we shall have passed away, and 
when the great name of Martin Luther shall have 
faded into that dimness which awaits all names save 
that of the Lord Jesus Christ." 

LUTHER A. GOTWALD, 

Pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church, York, Pa. 

" No blood of indolence flowed in our great Luther's 
veins. No idle moments filled up his life. No buried 
napkin of selfish ease held wrapped within its folds 
even the least of his high talents. Energy, activity, 
incessant planning, busy thinking, ceaseless doing, 
writing, speaking, giving, going, coming, working and 
putting others to work ; now in this way and now in 
that ; here to-day and there to-morrow ; now translat- 
ing the Scriptures, now preaching, now writing a letter 
to his little boy Hans, now one to Melanchthon, now 
one to the Elector, now dozens to others; now devis- 
ing plans for the improvement of the schools; now 
counseling with kings and princes concerning great 
questions of State ; now seeking to direct an awakened 
and anxious soul to Christ ; now tenderly weeping 
and sympathizing with the sorrowing; now hurling 
his thunderbolts of invective and defiance against Pope, 
Turk and Devil ; now studying the Catechism ; now 
composing a tract, now a book, now a hymn"*" with 

* Luther's enemies declared that he did more harm by his songs than 
by his sermons. Coleridge affirms that he served the Reformation as 
efficiently by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. And 
another writer says : " The children learned Luther's hymns in the cot- 
tage, and martyrs sang them on the scaffold." 



248 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



which, on wings of melody, to sing the new faith of 
the Reformation into the homes and hearts of the 
nation of the world: such is a single leaf from the 
book of our grand Luther's busy life — brain, tongue, 
hands, pen, all were ceaselessly busy and consecrated 
to Christ. A man was he in red-hot earnest in the 
work of the Lord; the fire of love to God and man 
glowing at white heat in deathless flame upon the altar 
of his heart !" — From Ids published ordiitation sermon. 

A. K. YOUNG, 

Pastor of First M. E. Church, Des Moines, la. 

" What does human freedom owe to the German 
monk? His hand never touched a carnal weapon in 
the interest of his cause. His voice was never heard 
in the halls of legislation. He championed no meas- 
ures that looked to governmental reform. With only 
the Word of God in his hands, he stood against the 
corruptions of the church, and demanded purification. 
To that purpose he steadfastly adhered. But we know 
that this work outran his purpose, and the Reforma- 
tion once started overleaped ecclesiastical boundary 
lines. Modern civilization is one of its offsprings. 
Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought began 
in the sixteenth century. The revival of learning 
dates from the birth of Protestantism, and civil liberty 
dawned when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five 
theses against the doors of the Wittenberg church. 
* * * Trace modern civilization to its source — 
you w^ll find it on the borders of the sixteenth century. 
Follow the stream of popular learning to its fountain 
head — it began to flow when Luther gave the people 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



249 



the Bible in their own language. Find the birth- 
place of liberty — Wittenberg. There was the world's 
'Declaration of Independence' written, and Martin 
Luther's Reform is the prophet and apostle of human 
freedom." 

E. GREENWALD, 

Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Pa. 

" What does the zvorld owe to L2itJier? Of course, 
Luther was but an instrument in the hands of God. 
We thank God for Luther. In every expression of 
praise of Luther, we glorify God for the blessings 
which he bestowed upon the world through him. We 
are not guilty of Lutherolatry, as the Romanists are 
of Mariolatry. We do nor worship Luther, nor pray 
to Luther, nor invoke Luther as a saint, nor pray to 
Luther to pray for us. W^e make no mistake like this, 
and are guilty of no such sin as this. At the same 
time it is right and profitable for us to commemorate 
his birth, and to recall the benefits we have through 
him, as one of the world's greatest benefactors. 

"What are the benefits that inure to us through the 
instrumentality of Luther? 

" We have sound doctrine. False doctrine lay at the 
root of all the evil of the time. That evil consisted 
not merely in empty forms, and idle ceremonies, and 
unmeaning genuflections ; in pictures, and relics, and 
processions; in penances, and flagellations, and count- 
ing beads; but, at the root of all these, and as the cause 
of all the corruption of practice that was the reproach 
of Christianity, lay the corruption of doctrine that had 
crept into the church. The head and heart were un- 
II* 



250 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



sound. Luther struck his hardest blows at the cor- 
ruption of doctrine that prevailed. If the head and 
heart were healthy, the hmbs would be sound. True 
doctrine would produce sound practice. In this re- 
spect Luther differed from the reformers that lived 
before the Reformation. To him we are indebted for 
the revival of true, sound, scriptural doctrine. We 
now have truth, where there was error, light where 
there was darkness, true Christianity where Christianity 
had been corrupted and false. For this we thank God 
for Luther. 

" We have salvation by grace. Salvation was supposed 
to be by work — works consisting not of real virtue, 
and goodness, and benefits conferred upon mankind, 
but human works, observances of human rules, and 
self-imposed penances, often meaningless, and of no 
spiritual or moral value whatever. It was practically 
a Gospel with no grace in it; a Christianity without a 
Saviour. Much adoration was rendered to the cross, 
and the crucifix, but Christ crucified, as effecting a full 
satisfaction for our sins, and salvation by grace and 
mercy alone, without any worthiness or merit in us — 
this way of salvation was covered up and buried out 
of sight by the cumbrous mass of humanly imposed 
observances. 'The just shall live by faith' — justified 
by Christ's righteousness alone, apprehended by faith 
— this is the grand doctrine of grace and mercy 
revealed in the Gospel, and covered up by a corrupt 
hierarchy, which grand doctrine was exhumed and 
resurrected from the dust by the instrumentality of 
Luther. For this priceless jewel we thank God for 
Luther. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



251 



"We have the right sacraments. Sacraments are 
channels through which God conveys grace to us. 
Besides the false notion expressed by the words ex 
opere operate^ and the gross carnal idea of transubstan- 
tiation in the Lord's Supper, the corrupt Church of 
Rome made the Eucharist an unbloody sacrifice, in 
which Christ, who had offered himself once for all on 
the cross, was daily re- offered by the priest in the 
mass, to save souls from purgatory. This direct con- 
tradiction of God's Word, the Reformation corrected; 
and whilst we have in the two sacraments, not seven, 
all the grace and blessings which they were appointed 
to convey, they are relieved of the false human addi- 
tions which had been attached to them. For the right 
sacraments we thank God for Luther, 

"We have the pure Church. Our Augsburg Confes- 
sion truly says, the true Church is where the Gospel 
is truly preached, and the sacraments are rightly ad- 
ministered. It is not by pope and cardinals, by age or 
long succession, by numbers of adherents, by compact 
organization, by gorgeous ceremonial, or by lofty pre- 
tension, that the true Church is constituted. It is the 
true faith that constitutes the true Church. A cor- 
rupt faith makes a corrupt church. We have the true 
faith of God's Word. For the true faith, and the true 
Church, we thank God for Luther. 

" We have aji open Bible. The Bible had been a 
shut book. It was locked, and chained, and forbid- 
den. Human tradition took the place of God's Word, 
as the rule of faith. Human tenets usurped the place 
of divine truth. The right of private judgment was 
denied, and men were burned for not accepting the 



252 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

dogmas imposed by a corrupt priesthood. The shut 
Pible is now an open book. Every man, woman, and 
child may have it, and may read and hear in their own 
tongue the wonderful words and works of God. The 
Bible, now open, will remain open, and can never be 
shut again. For an open Bible we thank God for 
Luther. 

"We \i2MQ freedom of thought. Thought had been 
bound with fetters stronger than iron. No man could 
call his soul his own. The very walls seemed to have 
ears. The most secret utterance of a sentiment at 
variance with the prevailing dogmas of the papacy, 
was reported to the Inquisition, was wrung out by the 
most cruel tortures, and exposed him that uttered it 
to be burned at the stake. Spies were in every house, 
and no man's life or liberty was safe. Worse than 
African slavery existed, for not the hands, but the 
mind was bound m shackles. The Reformation broke 
those fetters, and emancipated the conscience from the 
thraldom that enslaved it. Men, thenceforth, could 
think their own thoughts, and speak their own minds. 
For the inestimable blessing of freedom of thought, 
we thank God for Luther. 

" We have an 2intrammeled Church. The Romish 
hierarchy is the most absolute despotism on earth. It 
boasts of unity; but it is the unity of the tyrant's heel 
that presses upon its victim's neck, and crushes out 
all power of free action. In Italy, it was only when 
its temporal power was wrested from it by Cavour's 
well-known maxim: * A free Church in a free State,' 
carried out by the Italians, themselves, and announced 
by Cadorna's cannon battering down the gates of 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 253 

Rome, that the fetters that bound the people were 
broken in that dark and priest-ridden land. But that 
principle was only a repetition of the principle that 
was enunciated in Germany more than three hundred 
years before. It was Luther that first announced it. 
For a ' free Church in a free State,' we thank God for 
Luther. 

" We have civil liberty. Civil liberty before the Re- 
formation was unknown. Kings and popes, and lords, 
and priests, claimed to own the world and to_ rule it, 
whilst the people had no voice either in the choice of 
rulers or in the making of laws. There was despot- 
ism in the Church, and despotism in the State. The Re- 
formation appealed not only to kings and princes, but 
also to the people. Their emancipation from ignor- 
ance, and error, and superstition — from the dominance 
over their minds and hearts, of priests and monks, 
was the first elevation of the masses ; the first assertion 
of their right to choose the doctrines they ought to 
hold, the first movement toward independence from 
despotic rule. It revealed to them their power, and 
made known their capabilities. The echoes awakened 
by the hammer that nailed the ninety-five theses to the 
door of the castle church at Wittenberg, are reverberat- 
ing among the nations still. The Augsburg Confession 
and the Smalkald Articles in Germany, made possible 
the confirmation, extension, and popularization of the 
Magna Charta in England, and the adoption of the 
Declaration of Independence in America. If there had 
been no Luther in Germany, there would have been 
no Washington in America. For the invaluable bless- 
ings of our civil liberty and free institutions, we thank 
God for Luther. 



254 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

" We have our modern church civilization. No event 
in modern times has had a more marked influence 
upon the age, than the Reformation. The great 
Enghsh historian Froude has weU said in his recent 
articles on Luther: *The traces of that one mind are 
to be seen to-day in the mind of the modern world. 
Had there been no Luther, the English, American, 
and German peoples would be thinking differently, 
would be acting differently, would be altogether dif- 
ferent men and women from what they are at this 
moment' * * * * Yox these inesti- 

mable blessings we thank God for Luther, through 
whose instrumentality, He has brought it about. 

" For these, and many other blessings, let choir 
and orchestra, let young men and maidens, let old 
men and matrons, let pulpit and pew, let heaven and 
earth, ring out their glad anthems to-day, and thank 
God for Luther." 

MYRON W. REED, 

Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, Ind. 

" The advice of George Eliot is, * Never cross the 
threshold of a reformer.' It is a good general rule. 
Quite commonly the man who is busy in public in 
saving the world, goes home and puts on his slippers 
and rests himself by making it dismal for the children. 
It is possible to have compassion on the multitude and 
have no care for the individual. We admire the 
great reformers and heroes of the world, but many of 
them we do not love. As a rule they are not the 
people we would drop in upon of a quiet evening. 
There was no better man in the Senate than Charles 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 255 

Sumner, but there was better company. John Knox 
was a gloomy man, and John Calvin was not amiable. 
They hardened to their hard work. John Brown 
seemed to have no sense of humor. But it is well to 
cross the threshold of Martin Luther. He is as admir- 
able at home as anywhere. He was as gentle to chil- 
dren as he was rough to the Pope. He was greater 
than his work, and the boy survived in him. * * 

** Martin Luther was a man who laughed. He had 
read the Scripture ' Be not righteous over-much,' 
and taken it to heart. He had tried the plan of pleasing 
God by being painful — tried it faithfully by being a 
monk — tried fasting, vigils, hair shirts, and all sorts of 
self-torment, and he found God was not pleased; so he 
fell back on his healthy German common-sense and 
the Bible, and ceased to manufacture pain for himself 
or others. ******* 

"An American actor, dying, sent out for a minister, 
and when he came he looked at him and said to him : 
'Your religion does not seem to agree with you.' 
Luther had that without which man is helpless to do 
good — human nature — and he kept it whole. 

" This German organ had all the stops. He wrote 
a song to sing babies to sleep with, and the song was 
sung going into battle by the army of Prussia. He 
wrote a good letter to his little four-year-old son 
Hans : 

•* Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little boy. I am pleased to 
see that thou learnest well and prayest well. I know of a pretty gar- 
den where are merry children that have gold frocks and gather nice 
apples and plums and cherries under the trees, and sing and dance and 
ride on pretty horses with gold bridles and silver saddles. I asked the 



256 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



man of the place whose the garden was, and who the children were. 
He said, ' These are the children who pray and learn and are good.' 
Then I said, ' I have a son who is called Hans Luther : may he come to 
this garden and eat pears and apples and ride a little horse and play 
with the others?' The man said : ' If he says his prayers and learns 
and is good he may come, and Lippus and Just may come, and they shall 
have pipes and drums, and lutes and fiddles, and they shall dance and 
shoot with little cross-bows.' Then he showed me a smooth lawn in the 
garden laid out for dancing, and there the pipes and drums and cross-bows 
hung. But it was still early, and the children had not dined, and I could 
not wait for the dance, so I said, ' I will go straight home and write all 
this to my little boy. But he has an Aunt Lene that he must bring with 
him :' and the man answered : ' So it shall be : go and write as you say.' 
Therefore, dear little boy, learn and pray with a good heart, and tell 
Lippus and Just to do the same, and then you will all come to the garden 
together. Almighty God guard you. Give my love to Aunt Lene, and 
give her a kiss for me. Your loving father, Martin Luther." 

" It is a rare talent for one hand to oe stern enough 
to burn the Pope's bull and tender enough to write 
such a letter as that. You have heard, as a child, de- 
scriptions of heaven, I suppose, given by visitors to 
the Sunday-school. How do they, as you remember 
them, compare with this of Luther's ? As I remember 
them, they made the place not nearly so attractive to 
a little child as ' Charley Mayer's.' Nothing for a 
child to do ! This letter of Luther's was written nearly 
four hundred years before the books ' Gates Ajar,' and 
' Beyond the Gates.' So long ago it seemed to Martin 
Luther that a God Almighty and all-loving Father 
prepared a heaven that would please his children ; not 
poorer than the earth — richer; not less variety of 
sight, and sound and employment, but more ; a heaven 
in which no little child should ever be listless and 
homesick ! 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



257 



"The best book of Luther's is his 'Table Talk.' 
He did not bolt his dinner like an American Protest- 
'ant. He mixed it with stories, good ones. I suppose 
there are Christians in Chicago who have not seen 
their children on a week day by daylight for a year, 
except it may be in the long days in June. They can 
not keep still long enough to have a photograph 
taken. They will have to be taken by the instantane- 
ous dry-plate process, and be remembered by their 
children as running to catch something. These affairs 
of our people that consume the mind and wither the 
heart, and write their pitiful stories on the face, are not 
great affairs ; they are not affairs that must bless the 

" He was a great servant of God, as busy a man in 
great affairs as ever lived; but he loved and had sym- 
pathy with a little child — had a religion that included 
him. His religion included home, and friends, and 
games, and music, and pictures, and all that is good 
in the life that now is. He did not wait till he died 
to be pleased or to please others. He began right 
here and now to take in the good of life. The great 
God has made the face of the earth. It must please 
him to see a mortal make a faithful copy of it. To 
worship God will hinder no artist in any art. If evei 
a man could have excused himself from social duty 
and pleasure, Luther could. He had business, and 
* king's business, and it required haste.' But he ab- 
sented himself from no human felicity. He was a 
good father, and friend, and neighbor. He attracted 
humanity of all sorts and conditions. He ' adorned 
the gospel.' ******* 



258 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



" * O Douglas, Douglas ! tender and true.* It is 
possible to get that combination. ' Whatsoever things 
are just;' we are told to think on these things. We 
are also told to think on 'whatsoever things are 
lovely.' We strive for a religion that shall stand like 
its founder. You see Jesus doing the will of Almighty 
God, but little children are close about His feet. It 
is the divine and human both in one person, that, be- 
ing lifted up, draws all men. And it is this mingling 
of strength and sympathy in Martin Luther that has 
to-day, four centuries since his birth, made his name 
to be honored in every civilized street on the face of 
the earth." 

PHILIP M. BIKLE, 

Prof, of the Latin Language and Literature in Pennsylvania College. 

"And now, in looking at him, what a many-sided 
man Luther was ! How well adapted for the work to 
which God had appointed him! There have been 
other men of as rich religious experience as his; 
others who have been as strong in their convictions ; 
others as earnest in prayer; others who have trusted 
as implicitly in God's promises, and placed as high 
value on His holy word; others who have had as 
remarkable intellectual gifts, as great courage and 
strong will-power, or as much conservatism in re- 
formatory movements ; others who have written as 
precious hymns ; others who could as well sway the 
masses by their eloquence ; and others who have had 
the spirit of nationality and the better characteristics 
of their people as highly developed. But, while this is 
true, there is no one in whom these elements were 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



259 



ever so combined as in Luther. This combination is 
what gave him his special fitness for the work of the 
Reformation. God selected him and fitted him for it. 
He w^as a well-rounded, complete man. There was no 
one-sided development about him, either mental, spirit- 
ual, or physical, but a symmetry and harmony 
altogether exceptional. He w^as not all cold intellect, 
nor warm emotion, nor strong will — the one to the 
exclusion of the others — but a well-balanced combina- 
tion of all three. With all this he had a deep insight 
into human nature, an appreciation of its wants, and 
the practical tact and skill to meet them. 

" Coming to the light of the truth through an 
agonizing spiritual experience; endowed with a cour- 
age indomitable ; proclaiming his convictions without 
fear of papal emissaries, the pope himself, or the 
emperor; a man of humble, earnest prayer before 
his God, but of bold defiance before raging adver- 
saries; holding up the Word of God as supreme; set- 
ting at naught in the face of danger and death the 
decrees of the pope and councils when unscriptural; 
spreading the truth broadcast among the people by 
commentary and translation ; proclaiming freedom of 
conscience and the right of private judgment, he was 
the leader, under God, of the Church's deliverance 
from error and of the world's freedom. 

"With the cross in one hand — the cross, not the 
crucifix — the symbol of the Lamb slain for the sins of 
the world, but now deprived of its victim who is in the" 
midst of the throne, ever living and highly exalted as 
our great High Priest and final Judge, and the Bible 
in the other — the Bible not with lids clasped with lock 



26o TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

and key, but unbound and wide open, not chained to 
a desk but free for every one, not in a language un- 
known but in the people's own tongue — with the cross 
of Jesus Christ uplifted in one hand and the open Bible 
in the other, Luther stands before us as the great 
missionary of the truth, towering higher and higher 
as the centuries roll on, and becoming more and more 
the hero, not of the German people alone, but of the 
world." — Lutheran Quarterly, January, i: 



DOCTOR BAYLISS, 

Pastor of Walnut Hills Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

"John Wesley was converted to God on the even- 
irg of May 24, 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate street, 
where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle 
to the Romans, and therefore there is a sense in which 
Methodism is one of Luther's children ; for his preface 
helped Wesley into a new phase of religious life, and 
Methodism as an organized force is the embodiment of 
a new form of religious life, not known in Luther's 
time. 

" It is fitting then that Methodism should add its 
voice to the swelling chorus, for no seed of truth planted 
by the monk of Wittenberg has brought forth a more 
wonderful and luxuriant harvest than that which found 
its way into the heart of John Wesley, and so we join 
the song which this morning gladdens the world. 
One of the marvels of human history is that so much 
of the world's greatness and light have been born of 
its weakness and might. * * * Luther 

gave to the world an unchained Bible, and prepared 
the way for a spiritual epoch. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 26 1 

"The religious thought of Europe was Hke an eagle 
in an iron cage, his wings and head drooping in sad 
captivity. Luther walked up to the cage and shook 
the bars. The eagle lifted its head and looked at 
Luther and drooped again ; but Luther shook the cage 
again, and then the imprisoned bird lifted its head and 
wings, but there was no room to soar. Luther then 
said: * Melanchthon, bring me a hammer;' and 
then the strong, brave man hit blow after blow, and 
battered, while the bird fluttered and fumed to be free. 
At length he destroyed the prison cage, and the eagle 
lifted its proud head, poised its powerful pinions, and, 
as Luther eagerly watched it, bore itself upward and 
soared away to the sun. 

" Luther opened the door to the Holy of Holies in 
religion, and then out of the spread of truth and free- 
dom was evolved civil liberty, making the world for- 
ever his incalculable debtor." 

REUBEN WEISER, 

Lutheran Pastor of Denver, Colorado. 

" No man in the whole history of the world has ever 
called out such a wide-spread, spontaneous and imiversal 
storm of praise and eidogy ! Luther's name for the 
last twelve months has been on the tongue of every 
Protestant from Tasmania to Iceland, and from Nor- 
way to Nova Scotia ! More than one hundred mill- 
ions of Protestants, and they the most intelligent, 
pious, and the freest people under the heavens, have 
rendered their praises and homage to this illustrious 
champion of civil and religious liberty in unstinted 
measure. Looking at the honor paid to this great 



262 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

man, we may well inquire, what has he done to en- 
dear his name to posterity? Single-handed and alone, 
he produced the greatest moral and intellectual revo- 
lution in the histor)' of the world — he liberated the 
human mind from the bondage of papal error and 
superstition — he republished the gospel of Christ that 
had been buried under the rubbish of tradition — he 
gave the Bible to his countrymen in a language they 
could understand — he started all the mighty moral and 
intellectual machinery that is now moving the world." 
— November ii, 1883. 

C. H. SPURGEON, 

Of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, England, 

"Yesterday four hundred years ago there struggled 
into the world one who was to make unlimited noise 
in it — Martin Luther. Blessed was the day among 
many of the days that had gone before — the day when 
he was born, whose brave spirit should shake the nations 
and put an end to the tyranny and error which held 
millions of men in bondage. The whole of human 
history from that time was more or less affected by 
the work of that man. ^ ^ ^ -^ ^ 

" There are very few men like Luther in the present 
day. Most of us have not so much faith in our whole 
bodies as Luther had in his little fingers — not.so much 
faith in us as in the hair on his head. Yet even that 
little faith will make us live. I do not say it will give 
us the strong and vigorous and lion-like faith that such 
a man as he had. But we shall live. * * * 

" Luther put down his foot every time his friends 
begged of him to desist. He was a Titan, a giant, a 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 263 

man of splendid mental calibre, strong physique, and a 
man who suffered much and could suffer much. And 
still, while suffering so much and so often, he believed 
and was sure of nis belief He did not want their 
words when he had once got the word of God. This 
man lived by his faith because he was a man of strong 
\^ill. This strong excitement of his body brought on 
him afterwards fearful depression of spirit. If you 
read an accurate life of him, you will find that he had 
hard work sometimes to keep his soul alive. He was 
desponding and despairing sometimes at his weakness, 
and this great weakness made him feel as if it would 
burst his mighty heart. How often he and John 
Calvin longed to die, for they loved not the strife in 
which they lived. 

*' But Luther always had a pledge of Christ's atone- 
ment, and he got safe and happy again after he had 
looked Christ and God in the face. He was comforted 
by the precious blood of Christ. When he came to 
die they asked him if he held the same faith. He 
said: 'Yes.' They need not have asked him that. 
And now, to-day the name of Luther continues to be 
preached, and will be until Christ Himself shall come, 
and they shall need no candle, neither light of sun, 
because Christ Himself shall be the light of the people. 
Brethren, let us say, ' As Luther lived by faith, so do 
we.' God give us some more of that faith. Amen 
and amen." — November 1 1, 1883. 



264 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

A. SPAETH, 

Professor in Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" Luther has often been called the most German of 
Germans, the chief representative of the best union of 
the German and the Christian in one person ; and 
again he has been characterized as the very embodi- 
ment of the Church of his name, the very type in his 
own person of that sound form of Christian life and 
theology called Lutheranism, over against other forms 
and other names. We admit, most willingly, that in 
all this there is a great deal of truth and significance; 
and yet this way of looking upon Luther falls short of 
doing full justice to the true meaning and import of 
his place in the history of the Church and of the 
world. His is a position of much more comprehen- 
sive and widespread influence. He is not the man of 
a single generation, or of a single nation. He does not 
belong, and was not meant to belong, to the Germans 
exclusively, or to the sixteenth century, or to that 
particular church which by the choice of her enemies 
bears his name, in distinction from other churches and 
denominations. Luther belongs to all Christendom. 
His influence reaches down to our present time, and 
his voice, and the impulses given by him, are just as 
much needed in this nineteenth century as they were 
in the sixteenth, and just as well suited to the Chris- 
tians in the valley of the Mississippi and on the Pacific 
coast, as to those on the banks of the Rhine and on 
the hills of Thuringia. ***** 

" These few points, which have thus been briefly in- 
dicated, will suffice to show that we are perfectly justi- 
fied in calling the sixteenth century the opening of our 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 265 

modern era. And in the midst of the downfall of 
mediaeval life and institutions, at the very time when 
the first powerful pulsation of the spirit of modern 
times was felt, Luther was called forward by God's 
providence and charged with the most important life 
question, that of personal salvation. It was the most 
critical period in the history of the world, since the 
end of ancient Rome and Hellas, and the foundation 
of the Christian Church. And, as fifteen hundred 
years before, Paul had been pre-eminently the apostle 
and missionary who carried the seed of the new life 
through the ruins of the ancient and heathen world, so 
Luther had received a similar call in his own day. 
He is truly the apostle and prophet of the modern era. 
Not in the sense of his Romish defamers, who mis- 
represent him as the father of all the negative and 
destructive tendencies of our present time, and hold 
him responsible for all the mischief done in church, 
and state, and society, by an unbounded individualism 
and subjectivism. The ver>" opposite is true. In the 
midst of the storms and upheavings of his time, it was 
Luther's work to snatch from the wreck of the past, 
and to hand over to the rising era, the one greatest 
treasure, the jewel of God's pure, everlasting gospel. 
(Cf the sixty-second of his ninety-five theses : * The 
true treasure of the Church is the most holy gospel of 
the glory and the grace of God.') Reformation or no 
Reformation, the time of the middle ages was past. 
The new era was peremptorily knocking at the gate. 
It must enter. The question was only whether it 
should enter Christless, faithless, desperate and de- 
structive, a time of conflict and negation with ruin on 
12 



266 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

all sides, or whether it should come with the one 
power for the healing of the nations, the gospel of 
God's grace in Christ alone. But there stood God's 
chosen servant, firmly planted on the Rock of Ages. 
In the midst of the greatest convulsions and transfor- 
mations, Luther was the strongest, and, in a certain 
sense, the only conservator of all that was really 
worthy to be preserved." — November 9, 1882. 

s. J. Mcpherson, 

Pastor Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois. 

"There was never a more formidable opponent or 
more manly man to fight the devil, to bless men, or 
serve God, than this Luther, whose deeds are praised. 
Being a genius, he was too discerning to find refuge 
in either a monastery or the Romish church ; the 
warning that ' the just shall live by faith' was voiced 
to him by Jesus Christ, and marked his every step. 
Luther's conversion was the fountain-head of the 
Reformation, and every one desirous of becoming con- 
verted must do as did this zealous worker and Re- 
former when he followed the impression made upon 
his mind by Christ. He discovered that it was the 
duty of every one to render prayer, and that it was 
not the exclusive and paid privilege of the priesthood 
to exact the offering. His translation of the Bible was 
a work of such masterly finish and accuracy that it 
was said of him he therein made God speak German. 
It is owing to his discovery of the fundamental laws 
and facts of religious reform that he so faithfully 
labored for the cause, and met all opposition with a 
cheerful spirit; and when he boldly and courageously 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 267 

posted the ninet}^-five theses upon the door of the 
cathedral at Wittenberg, the world reechoed his senti- 
ments, simple and pure, and the Romish church shud- 
dered at the aspect of the crushing religious phalanx 
commanded by the master-reformer of all ages. He 
bowed to no one, and was truly the mightiest man of 
all in the field of religious reform. It is true, that at 
times he was too vehement and brusque. This is not 
attributable solely to his temperament, but also to 
the time at which he lived and labored. That he was 
human and humane is evidenced by his * Table Talk/ 
and many other productions. He loved children 
and music. These two fondnesses are singularly indi- 
cative of a true man. He was a veritable lion, not 
unlike the lion of Judah, brave and courageous. He 
believed in devils, perhaps more so or to a greater 
degree than we of to-day; but he was less afraid of a 
genuine devil than we are of ghosts. It was Luther 
who was the great emancipator of modern times, who 
unloosened with his own hands the many ritual obli- 
gations buckled by the Roman Catholic church around 
the ankles of mankind." 

JOHN JAY, 

President Exec. Com. Evangelical Alliance of the United States. 

"We are assembled to-night, at the call of the 
Evangelical Alliance of the United States, to com- 
memorate the four hundreth anniversary of the birth 
of Luther. This reminder of the great Reformer has 
stirred the hearts of the nations whom his teachings 
have helped to bring from the noxious mists of 
ignorance and superstition into the pure sunlight of 



268 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

Christianity. His memory is lovingly cherished in 
his own land as the moulder of the German mind, and 
almost the creator of the German tongue — the Re- 
former by whose voice, in that tumultuous movement 
for mental and moral emancipation, God awakened 
the people, and the echoes of whose voice still resound 
throughout the world. He is the chief figure in an 
historic picture which will be contemplated by the 
thoughtful of all lands to the end of time. He still 
lives, in the words of Coleridge, ' an antagonistic spirit 
to Rome and a purifying and preserving spirit to 
Christendom at large.' ***** 

" It seemed fitting that this Alliance, on which has 
devolved in part the work of maintaining the great 
truths proclaimed by Luther, against the self-same 
forces with which he contended, and against all other 
forces, foreign or domestic, which threaten our relig- 
ious liberties and the purity of American institutions, 
should call on Americans to join with the rest of 
Christendom in commemorating the birth of the great 
Reformer. No country has more reason than this 
Republic to recall with joy the blessings he assisted to 
secure for the world, in emancipating thought and 
conscience, and impressing the stamp of Christianity 
upon modern civihzation. Although America had 
not been discovered by Columbus when Luther was 
born, Luther's far-reaching influence, which to-day is 
felt from the Atlantic to the Pacific, helped to people 
our Northern Continent with the colonists, who laid 
the foundation of its future liberties on the truths of 
the Bible. He recommended the oppressed people of 
Europe to take the teachers of their choice, and with 



SF^AA'ERS' TRIBUTES. 269 

the Bible in their hand to follow the star of freedom 
to lands where religious liberty could find a home. 

'T* ^ ^ yfi yf>. y(i. 

" It would be easy to cite Roman Cathohc tributes 
— the more significant because paid perhaps uncon- 
sciously — to the Christian civilization to which Luther 
so largely contributed; but let me quote in closing a 
few words eloquent and touching from an eminent 
English pervert, Mr. Faber, of the personal value of 
the Bible which he could no longer read, and the cir- 
culation of which Rome now, as in the days of Luther, 
denounces as ' a pestilence.' 

" * Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and 
marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is one of 
the great strongholds of heresy in our country ? It 
lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, 
like the sound of church bells which the convert 
hardly knows how to forego. Its felicities seem to be 
things rather than words. It is a part of the national 
mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The 
memory of the dead passes with it, the potent tradi- 
tions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses ; the 
power of all the griefs and trials of man are hidden 
beneath its words. It is the representative of his best 
merits, and all there is about him of soft and gentle 
and pure and penitent and good speaks to him forever 
out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which 
doubt has never dimmed and controversy has never 
soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is 
not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about 
him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon 
Bible.' 



270 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



" When the frankest warning has come to us from 
a Brownson, of the danger threatened to our country 
from foreign influence and foreign schools, and of the 
necessity of saving our high American civilization 
from the deteriorating influences of what he called 
*the foreign colony;' when a Faber can thus describe 
with touching plaintiveness the priceless blessing of 
the Bible which he had lost, have such utterances no 
significance for this occasion? While they indicate 
the path to be pursued if we would preserve the bless- 
ings we enjoy and maintain in its purity the civiliza- 
tion which we inherit, may they not also justify the 
hope that our reasons for thankfulness at the life and 
work of Luther may find in the future yet wider 
scope, in the enlarging number of those who, what- 
ever their faith or their unbelief, shall come to 
recognize in the open Bible the divine teacher of the 
world?" 

WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, 

Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, New York. 

"In the prosecution of the excavations at Pompeii, 
the workmen laid bare an ancient spring of water, 
which, as soon as it was set free, flowed forth as copi- 
ously as ever, and carried refreshment with it wherever 
it went. For centuries it had been buried beneath the 
ashes of the volcano, but the moment it was again un- 
covered it sent out its stream of blessing with all its 
pristine fulness and wholesome influence. 

" Something like that was the work which Martin 
Luther did for the fountain of truth in the Sacred 
Scriptures. For many generations that had been vir- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



271 



tually stopped up by the rubbish of tradition, and 
entombed beneath the weight of authority ; but by his 
sturdy strength, his steady persistence, and his daunt- 
less courage, he dug it clear again; and it became once 
more, as at the first, the well-head of the river of pro- 
gress among the nations. That is the reason why his 
name marks the beginning of a new epoch in histoiy; 
and why four hundred years after his birth so many 
nationalities on both sides of the Atlantic are uniting 
to do honor to his memory. There was in him, in- 
deed, the might of a unique personality. He had a 
massive intellect, a glowing enthusiasm, a tender heart, 
a strong imagination, a masterful will, a fearless bold- 
ness, and a rich fund of common sense, all of which 
found vent in a vigorous eloquence and a prolific 
authorship to which the printing press gave the am- 
plest range. But these things alone would not account 
for the place which he holds in the estimation oi Pro- 
testants. Other men have been his equals in all these 
respects. Some have been even his superiors. But 
we do not hold such celebrations as this in their honor. 
There have been in every land philosophers, orators, 
statesmen, scholars, poets, who in ther own depart- 
ments have surpassed him, and we give to them no 
stinted praise ; but yet no such enthusiasm as we feel 
to-night thrills us at the mention of their names, be- 
cause each of them wrought with agents which had 
only an earthly potency and a restricted range. It 
was the merit of Luther that he set free the Word of 
God; and because that is a divine agent and touches 
the main springs of individual, social, and national life, 
his influence has gone farther, and struck deeper, than 



2^2 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

that of any other man in modern history. Great as 
he unquestionably was, his work was greater than him- 
self, because the instrument in his hands, as in Paul's, 
was that Gospel which is ' the power of God.' Hence 
the celebration of this four hundredth anniversary of his 
birth is truly more a tribute to the Scriptures than it 
is to himself We honor him not merely for what he 
was, but mainly because he digged again the well 
which for centuries had been stopped up. We cherish 
his memory not simply because of the qualities which 
he manifested in his great life-battle, but because by 
that battle he secured for us the liberty to read and 
interpret the Bible for ourselves; and so all that we 
owe to it, helps to swell our tribute to him. We vener- 
ate him, but we glorify God in him ; for he would have 
been no more to us than many other men, not so much 
perhaps as some other men, if he had not unsealed for 
us the fountain of the Scriptures. 

" Thus the right of private judgment was with him 
the abjuration of all human authority, in order that he 
might keep his loyalty to the authority of God in the 
sacred Scriptures. It was not, as he expounded it, 
the liberty of every man to think as he liked, but 
rather the inalienable privilege of every Christian to 
take the truth directly from the lips of the Lord with- 
out the intervention of pope or emperor. He threw 
off human intolerance that he might bow before divine 
authority. He would let no man come between the 
Lord and him, but when Christ spoke that was enough 
for him. He accepted that at once, and would give it 
up on no consideration. Now these two things — mark 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



VI 



it, not one thing, but two things — the repudiation of 
human authority in rehgious matters and the recogni- 
tion in the same department of the authority of Christ 
speaking through the Scriptures, are the balancing 
forces that keep the hfe of the Christian in its proper 
orbit. If he yields to human intolerance there will be 
slavery ; if he repudiates divine authorit}^, or what is 
the same thing in this case, the supremacy of Scrip- 
ture, there will be license; but by repudiating the one 
and acknowledo-ina; the other he walks in that service 
' which is perfect freedom ;' and in the fact that Luther 
insisted upon both, we have the explanation of the dif- 
ference between the Reformation in Germany and the 
first French E.evolution. 

" Here, too, it was that the work of Luther touched 
and influenced civil liberty. He stood for freedom of 
conscience, and thereby also widened the area of lib- 
erty in general. He asserted the equalit}^ of all men 
before God, in Christ; and out of that came at length, 
here and elsewhere, the Declaration of Lidependence, 
which affirms the equality of all men before human 
law. Had he flinched and recanted like Galileo, there 
would have been no such result. It is to the confessor 
of faith, and not of science, that we are indebted for 
the liberty we now enjoy; and if one ask what good 
the Reformation has effected in national life, we point 
him, in reply, to the difference between Great Britain 
under Victoria and under the Mary who sent Latimer 
and Ridley and Cranmer to the stake: may we ask 
him to look around and see its latest fruit in the great- 
ness of this Free Republic?" — TJiis, tJie foregoing^ and 
that of Phillips Brooks^ are extracts fi^ out speeches deliv- 

12* 



2/4 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

ered at Evang. Alliance Celebration in New York, and 
published in full in pamphlet form. 

M. LOY, 

professor of Theology in Capital University, at Columbus, Ohio. 

" It is no wonder that the world remembers Martin 
Luther, and that at this time people assemble in vast 
multitudes to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary 
of his birth. Men delight to honor those of their race 
who are justly styled great, and among the great 
names in history there is none greater than that of the 
' solitary monk who shook the world.' He was great 
in his natural endowments ; he was great in his 
acquirements in every department of human learning; 
he was great in the integrity of his character and in 
the moral heroism which he displayed in times of trial; 
he was great in his marvelous labors and achievements. 

' The brave monk who made the popedom rock. 
Champions a world to show his equal yet.' 

"if. if. if. ■:^ -^ -^ 

" In this same faith Luther performed those manifold 
labors by which the Reformation was spread and the 
Church of the Reformation was established. He never 
grew weary of preaching the everlasting gospel of the 
grace of God, and telling sinners of the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. In season and out of season he pro- 
claimed the good tidings of justification by faith alone, 
without the deeds of the law, to the peace and comfort 
of thousands who heard his voice, and of millions who 
since have read his noble sermons in print. To the 
German people he gave his admirable translation of 
the Bible, that the Word of God might abide in them 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 275 

richly in all wisdom. By his teaching and powerful 
defence of the truth which he taught, God freed the 
people from the bondage in which they had been held 
under papal rule, so that they dared to read the book 
which God had given to men for their souls' eternal 
good, and which is ' profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness,' but 
which the papacy had prohibited. The translation of 
the Bible is an imperishable monument of Luther's in- 
dustry and faith and love for the edification of God's 
people." 

JOHN H. BARROWS, 

Pastor of P'irst Presbyterian Church, Chicago. 

"Am I exalting a man into a sort of demi-god? 
No. God lifted him as he lifted Mount Sinai above 
the sandy and burning plain. After seeing the 
grandeur of the mountain, we may draw near and note 
the ragged outlines, rifts, and scars which are there. 
To me, considering the condition of the church in his 
age, Luther's virtues are the surprises, not his faults. 
The errors and sins of great men, exalted like the Pro- 
testant hero, afflict their own and succeeding genera- 
tions. The extravagance and ferocity which Luther 
showed in the heat of controversy, alienated and 
divided the friends of reform, and are stains on his 
memory. His refusal to extend the hand of Christian 
fellowship to Zwingli at Marburg is a sad proof of his 
mental and spiritual limitations. His views of predes- 
tination, and the bondage of the will, he carried to 
fatalistic extremes. His failure in the crisis of the 
struggle between the peasants and the princes to do 



2^6 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

justice to the former, led to lamentable results. And 
}'et the greatest natures have been drawn to Luther, as 
on the whole the most interesting and attractive Titan 
God ever raised up to smite a giant monster. Calvin 
said : ' Though Luther should call me a devil, I would 
still revere and love him as an eminent servant of 
God.' The impetuous torrent of Luther's mighty 
nature changes how often into a peaceful and arbored 
lake by which we linger with delight. He was a soul 
that ardently loved music and little children, and the 
dear Catherine — and had great hungerings-and thirst- 
ings for friendship. Jovial, in the literal sense of that 
word, — in rough German ways at times — his heart was 
great and tender; and beset by devils though his life 
seemed, and swept by great storms of passion, and 
wearied and depressed and sorrow-crushed though he 
often was, how his faith towered up like an Alpine 
crag, and what great joy came to him looking over 
the bounteous and peaceful earth which spoke to him 
of God. What peace was his at times, gazing up * into 
the deep heaven of \^orlds ? ' " 

PERE HYACINTHE, 

In St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Washington, D. C. 

"It has been a habit of my Ultramontane antagon- 
ists to call me by the opprobrious epithet given to 
Martin Luther — that of 'Apostate Monk.' I should 
like to be his disciple — not in all of his opinions, but 
so far as these opinions are great and immortal in the 
work of Reformation. I salute in him the first Old 
Catholic. He wanted to reform according to his ideas; 
inside and not outside. He wanted, in fact, no divi- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 277 

sion; no schism. I should hke to accompHsh what 
Luther began — a thorough reform in the Latin 
Church. For Luther would have kept within the 
church lines in a regularly constituted episcopate, if 
he could have done so." 

Continuing, the Pere said, in substance, that Luther 
was animated by these principles : " First, he was to 
break off connection with Rome, with its errors and 
abuses ; secondly, at the same time he was to remain 
loyal to the faith as taught in the Bible, and faithful to 
Christ as the Very Son of God. In following these 
two principles he traced two lines of demarcation, one 
of time and one of space. That of time was a new era 
in the Church and in society. The Renaissance was 
only a preparation for this Reformation, as of the Re- 
naissance the French Revolution was only a conse- 
quence. Neither created a distinct era. That was 
done by the Reformation inaugurated by Luther. 

" The Reformation drew a line of demarcation both 
in America and in Europe, between the people who 
were emancipated* by Luther and those still holding 
allegiance to Rome. As regards these it was not a 
question of race, but of a religious system. For ex- 
ample, the Irish Kelts, the Slavic Poles, the Austrian 
Germans, all of whom are Romanists, are as surely in 
a state of decadence as the Latin nations. Thirdly, to 
practice what he preached was Luther's aim. He was 
courageous enough to do this, in private as well as in 
public and ecclesiastical life.*' 

The Pere closed by hoping that in 1983 the whole 
world would be neither Protestant nor Romanist, but 
that humanity would be united in one great Christian 
Church. 



278 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



Hon. Simon Wolf, Ex-U. S. Consul to Egypt, fol- 
lowed Pere Hyacinthe in a burst of fervid eloquence, 
wherein he paid a glowing tribute to the genius and 
character of the great German who had emancipated 
human thought. He looked upon Luther as the 
greatest man born to humanity since time began. — 
National Republican, Nov. 12, 1883. 

D. M. GILBERT, 

Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Winchester, Virginia. 

** It is not in the nature of things that a thoroughly 
consecrated, laborious, courageous life, like Luther's, 
should be lived at any time in vain. But given to the 
world, in God's providence, at a period when just such 
qualities as his were most sadly needed, and for a work 
the importance of which, to his own and succeeding 
generations, can scarcely be exaggerated, he became, 
as we have seen, the hero of a deliverance grander in 
itself and in its consequences than any of which the 
annals of uninspired history can tell — the Moses of a 
modern exodus from an incomparably worse than 
Egyptian bondage. ***** 

" Luther's character and life have been sifted as 
wheat, and his worth thoroughly tested by ten genera- 
tions of men. We are not left to suppose anything 
concerning the indebtedness of our times to him whom 
a great Romish historian even has been constrained to 
eulogize as the ' Liberator of modern thought.' His 
fame is secure. His influence for good will be unceasing. 
As the late Dr. Krauth has felicitously expressed it, — 
* Luther will abide as a living power through all time. 
His image casts itself upon the current of ages as the 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



279 



mountain mirrors itself in the river that winds at its 
foot. The mighty immutuably fixing itself upon the 
changing.' * * * * * * 

" And as we hastily rehearse to-day something of the 
story of his life, — as we mark the high-souled courage 
with which, in the championship of his holy cause, he 
confronted every danger, and calmly bore himself 
through every trying crisis, who of us does not feel 
that when at last he yielded up his spirit to the God 
who gave it, there was no hero of a hundred battles 
over whom it might be more fitly said: 

" * O iron nerve, to true occasion true, 

O fallen at length, that tower of strength, 
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew ? ' " 

J. B. REIMENSNYDER, 

Pastor of St. James Lutheran Church, New York City. 

" It has been the habit of some to assert that other 
reformers, as Wickliffe, Savonarola and Huss failed, 
and Luther succeeded, because, in his case, the time 
was ripe for the movement. But just and acute 
thinkers are generally abandoning this position as 
untenable. For, ' if the man could have done noth- 
ing without the fortunate hour, the hour would have 
passed unused unless the man had appeared.' And 
this explains the extraordinary fact that during the 
tumultuous upheavals of the next thirty years, Luther 
never lost control of the movement. For it alone was 
the signal ability which had originated the Reforma- 
tion, that was equal to the wise conduct of the vast 
forces which it clothed with a dangerous, because un- 
wonted, liberty. Everywhere, therefore, do we see 



28o TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

Luther's colossal figure towering in the forefront. It 
is he who restrains the fiery Elector; nerves the timid 
Melanchthon; reproves the haughty Henry VIII. of 
England; represses the fanatical Prophets; reassures 
the wavering hosts; and snatches victory from the 
very jaws of defeat. His strong hand always holds the 
helm, and all by common consent look to him as the 
leader. Without Luther there would have been no Re- 
formation. While he lived and his temperate counsels 
prevailed, there was no bloodshed between the oppos- 
ing parties, and nations and millions came over to 
Protestantism in a day. But since his death, Roman- 
ism has held, at least, her territory. The historian 
Froude, therefore, truly says : ' If the Reformation 
had been led by Carlstadt, or Zwingli, or Munzer, it 
would have failed. But that it was able to establish 
itself was due to the one fact that there existed at the 
crisis a single person of commanding mind as the in- 
carnation of the purest wisdom which then existed in 
Germany, in whose words the bravest, truest and most 
honest men saw their own thoughts represented;, and 
because they recognized this man as the wisest among 
them, he was allowed to impress on the Reformation 
his own individuality! ' " From Synodic Sermon {^pam- 
phlet). 

CHARLES A. BRIGGS, 

Prof, of Theol. in Union Theol. Seminary, New York. 

"The chief merit of Luther as a professor was in his 
unflinching fidelity to truth. He was not so great a 
scholar as Melanchthon; but Melanchthon would have 
given away the Reform by his compromising policy, if 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 28 1 

Luther had not held him fast to the truth. Luther 
was not so keen a critic as Carlstadt or Agricola ; but 
these became narrow and one-sided, conceited and 
fanatical, and Luther could not restrain them from 
mischief-making. He was not a politician as were 
Zwingli and Calvin. He did not seize the civil or the 
ecclesiastical sword to battle for the Reform or to purge 
the church. Zwingli took the sword to perish by the 
sword. Calvin purged Geneva so heroically that he 
made hypocrites and pious exiles. Luther wielded the 
sword of the spirit. He grasped the truth with all his 
strength and made it a part of his own being. The 
truth of God swayed him with irresistible power. He 
was not controlled by half-truths and force of circum- 
stances. Essential and vital truths and the great unities 
made him their spokesman. He held these up as the 
truth of God, to guide and save the nations. He im- 
pressed them so deeply upon the Germanic world, that 
they characterize the modern age, and will never be 
effaced. 

"When truth became supreme in the university of 
Wittenberg, in the lecture-room of Luther, the pope 
and the monastic orders, the empire and the allied 
kings, had to contend — not with Luther and his 
students — ^but with a divine force, the eternal Logos, 
the living God." Sem'y Symposiac, a Pamphlet. (See 
same pamphlet for full addresses of Drs. Hitchcock, 
Brown, Schaff, Shedd, Prentiss and Hastings.) — New 
York, Nov. 19, 1883. 



282 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

L. A. FOX, 

Of Roanoke College, in College Church, Salem, Va. 

" Prominent among the characteristics of Luther, dis- 
tinguishing him from all preceding and contemporary 
reformers, are these three : Fwst. He did not propose 
it. He began, as he believed, a loyal son of the 
Romish Church. In his simplicity, he was defending 
the holy Father at Rome when he nailed up the Ninety- 
five Theses. Duty to his congregation called him out, 
and he was astonished when the echo came ringing 
back from all Germany. In this opening he had no 
general plan; he was the child of Providence, and this 
characterized all his efforts. He took step after step 
as circumstances pointed out the way. When was 
there a great mind engaged in a grand work, a willing 
cheerful agent, so wanting in general plans for its pro- 
secution? God led him, and in nothing does the 
grandeur of his faith come out more clearly than in his 
patient submission to this leading. 

" Secondly. Pie was distinguished by the profound 
depths of his religious experience. His intense 
earnestness has often been noted and here is its prime 
reason. The Reformation took place in his own heart 
and was carried thence into the church. In the 
cloister he learned the wickedness of the human heart, 
its blindness and helplessness as well as its alienation 
from God. Not Augustine but his own inner life was 
his teacher in Anthropology. Our ruin and our need 
of a Saviour was with him not merely a doctrine but a 
realized fact. It was in these struggles after peace, 
which under the efforts of his powerful will almost de- 
stroyed him, that light came. He had tasted the bitter- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



283 



ness and found relief and now he knew how to help 
others. Heart spoke to heart and his words rang 
through all Europe. His own trials filled him with a 
profound sympathy for toiling man, and he worked for 
the people. He knew the importance of speculative 
theology, but the great practical truths of religion 
engaged his tongue and pen. He came up out of a 
common pit and holds out his powerful hand to help 
others to rise, and became pre-eminently a man of the 
people. Here is the human secret of his power, the 
human reason for his success. 

" Thirdly. He has distinguished by his intense devo- 
tion to truth. Truth was to him a principle of life, 
and not of mere thought, a matter of the heart and not 
of the mere reason. Life had no significance to his 
intensely religious eye, except as related to eternity. 
He knew no means of emancipation from sin and no 
source of a life in God, except in revealed truth. The 
hope of the world depended on it. He was, therefore, 
most profoundly devoted to it. He sunk himself in his 
consecration to it. He cared not what became of him- 
self if the truth were advanced, and he had no interest in 
his work except as identified with the truth. He was 
fearless in the midst of dangers that made the bravest 
shrink, often reckless in the eye of his friends, courting 
martyrdom apparently, and here is the reason he lost 
all sight of himself in his intense gaze upon the defense 
of truth. This was the power that lifted him into his 
wonderful heroism. He spared no enemy of the truth. 
He rejected . all counsels of expediency when truth 
was about to be compromised. Alliance with the 
Swiss seemed a matter of the gravest importance; sue- 



284 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



cess seemed to hang upon it ; but he refused the frater- 
nal hand, because he thought truth was sacrificed. 
God's cause and the cause of truth are one, and be- 
heving in the omnipotence of truth, he never courted 
any earthly power. He stood out centuries in ad- 
vance of his age, holding against the ages past that 
truth and not force nmst overcome error. He cor- 
rected the errors in worship and government which 
the cause of truth demanded, but left all others to the 
determination of time and place. He grasped truth 
clearly, presented it plainly, arrayed not the blind pre- 
judice of custom against his work, and where his ut- 
terances went they awakened a deep response in the 
hearts of the multitude. 

" To-day we have the world's estimates of the im- 
portance of his work, and the grandeur of the man. 
Such an outburst is unknown in history. It has been 
said that the Reformation is a failure ; but if so, what 
mean the vast assemblies gathered to-day in every 
civilized country? Luther's name is shown to be the 
grandest in uninspired history." 

ROBERT A. EDWARDS, 

In the Episcopal Church of St. Matthias, Philadelphia. 

" Martin Luther, in freeing Germany from papal 
domination, secured blessings which have enriched and 
elevated peoples of every other enlightened nation on 
the face of the earth. His bust stands in the Walhalla 
at Ratisbon, among the other distinguished sons of 
Germany; but when Frederick, Barbarossa, Mozart, 
Goethe, and Humboldt, shall be known simply by 
their names on pages of history, Luther will remain a 
living power among the sons of men. * * * * 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



285 



" Some years ago I entered the plain church at 
Wittenberg, and a modest slab in one of the aisles was 
pointed out to me by an attendant. It marked the 
resting place of Luther's ashes. There was nothing 
grand or imposing about the place; but an influence 
hangs around it more potent than ever surrounds the 
massive St. Peter's at Rome. Luther's enemies abused 
and slandered him while alive, and some prints of oui 
day reecho their falsehoods now; but as long as the 
world shall last will the name of Martin Luther be 
honored and his memory" revered. He cared not for 
health and position, but lived for his fellow-man 
supremely. Four hundred million Protestants to-day 
enjoy blessings which he in part secured." 

H. M. G. HUFF, 

Rector of St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church, Johnstown, Pa. 

** Little did the Church of Rome think, while Savon- 
arola was preaching the Reformation in Florence, and 
a deeper piety among her children, that in Germany 
there nestled on the bosom of a devoted Christian 
mother a babe, who would m his life-time revive God's 
cause, and shed forth the renewed light of faith — the 
heritage of us all." 

F. W. CONRAD, 
Editor of Lutheran Observer, Phila., Pa. In Farvvell Hall, Chicago. 

" Luther gave the holy scriptures to the people in 
their vernacular tongue. Notwithstanding what Christ 
had said, the Church of Rome raised tradition above 
the truth. The result was what might have been ex- 
pected. Luther said that until the people had the 



286 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

scriptures for themselves to read and judge, no great 
reform was possible. And so he devoted himself to 
the task of translating the scriptures into the German 
tongue. In three months he had translated the New- 
Testament, a most herculean task. If the Bible be not 
in the hands of the people, no private judgment can be 
passed upon it. Luther saw that fact, and determined 
to give the people an opportunity to search the Scrip- 
tures, and to form opinions upon what they read. 
Luther exercised the right of judgment and the liberty 
of conscience. He wrote a treatise in which he de- 
clared that neither the Church of Rome nor any other 
power had the right to deprive people of the privilege 
of thinking for themselves. Luther's conduct gave 
rise to a conflict for freedom of thought which has 
gone on to the present day. Now free thought 
triumphs everywhere, and the triumph is that of Mar- 
tin Luther; and Luther to-day is everywhere regarded 
as the champion of human liberty. A mistake in the 
translation of the scriptures occasioned the erroneous 
belief that except one do penance he can not prepare 
himself for heaven. The word translated was peni- 
tennae, which meant not penance but penitence. The 
Roman Catholic church seized upon the idea, and in- 
dulgences were soon spread over all Europe, to the 
disgrace of Christendom. Luther heard of the indul- 
gences. Documentary evidence of their having been 
granted was shown to him in the confessions. He de- 
termined to break up the pernicious system, and in his 
Ninety-fifth Thesis he shattered it so that it never re- 
covered. 

" To Luther we owe the bringing out in its greatest 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 28/ 

prominence the leading doctrine of the Christian 
Church — justification by faith. Luther said, with re- 
gard to this doctrine, that if the doctrine be kept pure 
the Christian Church would be kept pure ; but that if 
it be corrupted the whole Christian Church would be 
corrupted. Again, Martin Luther discarded the false 
sacraments and maintained the pure ones. Two sacra- 
ments were given by the Lord. The Catholic church 
multiplied them until there was a sacrament for nearly 
every ceremony. The sacraments were perverted, and 
reform was absolutely necessary. Then Luther, in 
his treatise on Babylonish captivity, showed that in the 
matter of sacraments the Romish church had bound 
the people worse than had been bound the Babylonish 
captives. 

" Again, Luther assailed the Romish ministry as a 
sacerdotal body, and set up the Christian ministry in- 
stead. Luther said that the papal system must be 
overthrown, and he assailed it. Seeing the danger of 
raising into the pulpit young men who might be in- 
flated with pride over their elevation, he made educa- 
tion a necessary qualification ; and seeing the danger 
of raising up uncoverted men, he had recourse to 
methods to determine that the ministry- were of the 
right kind. The Romish church had taken the Word 
of God out of the Church; it had introduced ceremonies 
horrible to witness ; it had put forth ceremonies in an 
unknown tongue. Luther prepared a form of service 
and had sermons delivered in the vernacular; he re- 
stored the power of sanctification ; he restored the Sab- 
bath. Martin Luther held that the Sabbath was made 
by nature, and that man needed a Sabbath as consti- 



288 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

tuted by God. The day was to be kept holy ; works 
of necessity might be performed, but works of neces- 
sity must not be invented. Again, when some of the 
Germans tried to divide the Sabbath, saying that part 
of the day was to be holy and part was not, he went 
for them. And he went for them, too, on account of 
their drinking customs, and in this particular he did a 
great amount of good. Martin Luther also proclaimed 
against the fancy of women for dress, and broke up 
many customs which had taken fast hold upon the 
people, and were tending to immorality. * * * * 
As Luther is called a successful Reformer, let us see 
what were the elements of his success. First, his con- 
stitutional endowments as God made him; second, his 
wonderful power of invention of resources under all 
circumstances. In twenty-nine years and four months 
he wrote seven hundred and nineteen works — more 
than one a fortnight. Third, his consummate leader- 
ship. There are few great leaders ; Martin Luther 
was the greatest of all in his sphere. He seemed to 
have the power to see the two extremes, and to run 
the golden mean between them. Fourth, his magnet- 
ism and his modesty. All about him were attracted 
to him, and looked upon him as their chieftain, yet he 
spoke of them as equal to him, and of Melanchthon 
as his superior. Fifth, his great courage. When the 
pope excommunicated him, he excommunicated the 
pope. Look at his conscientious devotion to principle 
and moral undauntedness. They tried to make him 
recant; and they all failed. At last he was brought 
before the emperor, and he said : ' I cannot submit my 
faith to the popes and the councils, for it is as clear as 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 289 

heaven that they have fallen into error.' Carlyle says 
that that was the turning point in the modern history 
of the world. All progress since that day owes its 
germ to Luther. Were it not for that day, the present 
civilization would bear the imprint more of Romanism 
than of Protestantism. We may be charged with that 
hero-worship of which Carlyle speaks; but, as judged 
from history, Dr. Martin Luther rises up a colossal 
figure, which to this day receives the homage of the 
Christian world." — Chicago Times ^ Nov. 11, 1883. 

R. A. FINK, 

Of Johnstown, Pa. 

"The birth of Martin Luther at Eisleben, on the 
loth day of November, 1483, was the most important 
and far-reaching event in all the ages since the birth in 
Bethlehem of the world's Reedemer. The child, then 
and there born, was destined under God to become the 
greatest benefactor of his age, and all the ages to fol- 
low. And on this anniversary day it is fitting that we 
recall, as far as possible, the memories of the man and 
his work. As a man he was in intellectual power, 
in deep and earnest piety, and in great and mighty 
achievements, apart from Inspiration, certainly the equal 
if not the superior of the great Apostle Paul. As to 
the results of his work, it is vain to attempt to estimate 
their importance. It is impossible to turn round with- 
out seeing and feeling the blessings that have flowed 
to us and to the world from what he wrought. There 
is not a single bough or branch of life — religious, 
domestic, social, civil, or political — that is not laden 
with the rich and golden fruit. Had there been no 
13 



290 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



1 0th of November, 1483, there would have been no 
31st of October, 15 17; and had there been no 31st of 
October, 15 17, there never could have been a 4th of 
July, 1776. Luther gave to perishing men an open 
Bible. And whatever fruit the Bible has caused to 
grow on the earth, * that is pleasant to the sight,' or 
good for spiritual food, bespeaks our gratitude for the 
work God wrought through Luther in the sixteenth 
century. And whatever the blessings of civil and 
religious liberty the world enjoys, it must be remem- 
bered that the world is indebted more to Luther than 
to America, and that America is indebted more to 
Luther than to herself A thankful jubilee, therefore, 
on this memorial day, is appropriate not to Lutherans 
alone. It would well become all Protestant churches 
— for they all have their life from the Reformation by 
Luther. It would well become our whole country — 
for Luther's free Bible has given its life of freedom, 
virtue, power and progress. It would well become the 
world — for the blessings of Luther's work are fast 
girdling the whole earth. May God cause all of us to 
catch the spirit of the mighty Reformer ! And when 
we love the Church as Luther loved it, love the truth 
as Luther loved it, and are ready to sacrifice every- 
'Jiing for its triumphs as Luther did, then, like him, 
t/e shall not live in vain, nor labor in vain." 

E. C. SWEETSER, 

In the Universalist Church of the Messiah, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" There is in Worms a historic monument — Luther's 
bronze effigy — towering in the centre of a grand study 
in statuary, of which figures of Huss, Albiges, and 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



291 



Wickliffe, his precursors in free religious thought, and 
three fig-ures emblematic of the cities in which Luther 
lived and labored, are the accessories. Luther is 
standing with uncovered head and face uplifted, in the 
act of speaking the words of courageous defiance to 
emperor and pope, for which he is best remembered : 
' Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise, God helping 
me.' The potent influence of the man thus commemo- 
rated was seen yesterday in the pomp and ceremony 
throughout Germany, and largely in every country not 
under papal domination, attending the celebration of 
his four-hundredth birthday. He was born in the des- 
potism of Catholicism, for then the papacy controlled 
kings and emperors. All individual thought was 
crushed out by the terrors of the sword or the terrors 
of the Inquisition. Popes and priesthood were cor- 
rupt, and taxed the people to serve their own unworthy 
ends. They taught the doctrine that money could 
release the transgressor from more or less of the con- 
sequences of his sins. He lived in the time when ab- 
ject slavery to the pope existed, in place of the liberty 
wherewith Christ has made us free. Journeying to 
Rome in search of the spiritual edification which he 
believed was obtainable in the Holy City, he left it 
heavy-hearted, after two weeks' sojourn, with the 
declaration : * In Rome everything is permitted except 
to be an honest man.' Indulgences were openly sold; 
the priesthood were immoral; the Church was rotten 
to the core. Inspired by his high vocation, he formu- 
lated the ninety-five theses which formed the first basis 
of his open revolt against the papacy, and his cause 
blossomed out into the great achievement of German 



^02 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

independence. The Romish church is indebted to 
him for the purification of its morals and manners. 

" Luther was far from being perfect. He was rough 
in manner, but under that roughness lay a warmth of 
heart that made his home a domestic paradise. He 
possessed in a magnificent degree the qualities which 
most command admiration — splendid courage, devo- 
tion to truth, and compelling energy. He was to 
Germany and the Protestant world what Homer was 
to Greece, Washington was to America, and Ezra and 
Nehemiah to the Hebrew nation." 

G. F. KROTEL, 

Pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, New York City. 

"'And who went ye out into the wilderness to see? 
— a prophet. Yea, and I say unto you, more than a 
prophet' So might we ask of millions throughout 
the world who have come together to-day. We could 
ask them why they have gathered, and they might 
have answered us as in the Scriptures: We have come 
to behold a man. He needs no picture. He stands 
before us to-day, a man standing above his fellows like 
a mountain peak amongst the hills. To look upon 
such a man are we here to-day. Four hundred years 
ago a poor miner's boy was born in Eisleben. We 
may trace his steps through school, his studies at the 
University at Erfurt, where he was made bachelor, 
and afterwards master of arts. He became well versed 
in philosophy, the most learned Augustine in Germany. 
In 1508 he was made a professor at Wittenberg, where 
in 1 546 he was buried. He lived in no great cities or 
palaces. His life was spent in the smaller places, and 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES, 293 

yet we are now in thousands of places met to remem- 
ber him, because we feel that of all great men, un- 
inspired, Martin Luther was the greatest. Thomas 
Carlyle once said, * I will call this Luther a true, great 
man; great in intellect, courage, affection, and integ- 
rity.' He was great in intellect who could succesfuUy 
contend with such men as Erasmus ; who could trans- 
late the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek into Ger- 
man, and do it so well that his work has lasted four 
hundred years. Many are his other works which are 
now published in this country and Germany. 

" He was great in courage. When we think of him 
we think of a hero, and his name is synonymous with 
hero. When he preached against the pope's indul- 
gences, and when he nailed up his theses in Witten- 
berg, and burned the papal bull, was he not coura- 
geous? He was great in affection. His private life is 
full of love (he had a great heart as well as brain), of 
love for God as well as men, for whom he consecrated 
his life. Children of the Sunday-school, read the home 
life of Martin Luther; read of his care and love for 
his six children ; see his affection when they are taken 
away. You will weep when you see him leaning over 
the little body of the dead Magdalene. Great in integ- 
rity, another synonymous word, integer vitcB scclerisqiie 
pwms^ that IMartin Luther had. He was great in one 
thing, which Carlyle does not speak of — faith. He 
trusted in God with all his soul, with all his heart and 
all his might. He sang : *A Mighty Fortress is our 
God.' All of his inspiration came from the Bible. In 
the ancient pictures, St. Paul is represented with a 
sword in his hand ; so is Luther, in that statue, shown 



rr4 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

w ith his sword, not girded about his loins, but in his 
1 ands — the Word of God. 

" What are the results of Luther's work ? We have 
the free Bible in our homes ; we have a free church, 
where we can worship as conscience dictates ; we have 
an evangelical service; we sing beautiful hymns in our 
own tongue, for you remember he was the founder of 
the hymn book, the first edition of which he published 
in 1524. 

" In St. Paul's Cathedral, over the grave of Sir Chris- 
topher Wren, are the words : ' If you seek my epitaph, 
look about you.' Fifty million people in a free land, 
under a free religion, make the monument for Luther. 
These gatherings say to Rome: We stand to-day 
by what he stood. We confess to what he con- 
fessed, and hold fast to the Scriptures, by the grace of 
God, to hand down to remotest generations, saying, as 
did he to his inquisitors : * Here we stand. We can- 
not do otherwise. God help us ! ' " — Philadelphia^ Nov. 
10, 1883. 

M. SHEELEIGH, 

Of Fort Washington, Pa. 

"In noting a few of the prominent characteristics 
of Martin Luther, which were in him grand secrets of 
power and success, observe that : 

"i. He was a man of distinguished Faith. No 
half -he arte dness could have been sufficient for the time 
and the occasion. God, who had step by step pre- 
pared his servant for a work of the ages, had nerved 
up the soul of this man and filled it to overflowing 
with faith. I doubt whether there is a7iy more promi- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



295 



nent example of mere human faith spoken of outside 
of Holy Scripture, or in it cither. Such unwavering 
trust in the character of God, such implicit reposing 
upon the merits of Jesus Christ for mercy and forgive- 
ness, such unshaken confidence in the promises of the 
Divine Word — oh, it is simply wonderful I * * * 

" 2. Luther was a man of mighty Prayer. With 
him prayer was not by any means an empty form. He 
took God at His word. He pleaded with heaven as a 
man may plead face to face with his friend. Concern- 
ing no man within the scope of history can it be more 
properly said that he * moved the Arm that moves the 
world.' It is recorded that each day he spent three 
hours in secret prayer. And the more he had to do, 
the more he prayed. No man ever understood more 
thoroughly that all human exertion is vain without 
heaven's blessing. He cast all the interests of the Re- 
formation work on the infinite heart of Him whose 
it was. He worked so incessantly and zealously as 
though all success depended on human exertion; and 
he prayed so urgently and importunately as though 
human agency were of no consideration. * * * 

" 3. Another characteristic of Luther was that he 
was 2itterly fearless of opponents. He did not seem to 
know what it was to have any personal fear before the 
face of man. In him was most prominent the material of 
which martyrs are made. If at times he saved his life, 
on the earnest solicitation and planning of friends, he 
yielded only that his life might thus be spared for the 
sake of the Lord's cause. But when he believed that 
that same cause required the exposure of his life, even 
though it should be unto death, he would not be dis- 



296 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



suaded from his purpose. Long and strongly had he 
to resist the sohcitation of friends when his mind was 
made up to obey the summons to appear at the Diet 
of Worms. They told him that his fate would be that 
of John Huss, who had been burned at the stake not- 
withstanding the safe-conduct he bore in his hands. 
You remember those astounding figures of speech 
which he then called to his aid in expressing his deter- 
mination. And you remember also those familiar 
words with which he closed his declaration before the 
assembled dignitaries of Church and State, announcing 
positively that he neither could nor would retract the 
things contained in the books he had written, which 
were in accordance with the Holy Scriptures : ' Here 
I stand. I cannot do otherwise, God help me ! Amen.' 
At these words that assembly was startled by the 
heroism of this defenceless man. The land was startled. 
Other lands were startled. And we of to-day are star- 
tled. What forgetfulness of self — what fearlessness 
before the might of man — for the sake of the holy 
truth I"* * * * * * * * 

— WJdtemarsh and Dublin, Pa., Nov. 11, 1883. 

J. B. BALTZLY, 

Of Indianapolis, Indiana. 

" Luther established the right and duty of private 
judgment, and the truths of the intelligibility of the 
Scriptures, the priesthood of all believers, the invisi- 
bility of the true, and the fallibility of the visible 
Church. He ever maintained the worth and right of 
the Christian man. He is the creator of the language 
of German literature. He suggested the incomparable 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



297 



German school-system, with compulsory education. 
He was the earliest champion of higher education for 
women. He wanted to see all the arts and sciences 
fostered and in the service of God. He loved and 
composed music, prepared the first collection of spiri- 
tual songs, and introduced congregational singing. 
His foresight in civil and social matters was remark- 
able. He contended for the separation of Church and 
State. He warned Germany concerning her intemper- 
ance. He suggested our charity-organization societies 
three centuries ago. He encouraged husbandry, and 
spoke brave words for the common rights of the peas- 
ants. He was beforehand with anti-monopoly views. 
His mind was world-wide. His courage, tenderness 
and humor are preeminent. His moderation and tol- 
erance seem almost a paradox in such a character. 
His fame is large, because he was large. He is the 
world's, because to so great an extent the world was 
his. He loved, and is loved. His sympathies went 
out from him like loving hands to all the points of the 
compass of man and life, and the world responded, 
and still responds, to his touch." 

J. G. MORRIS, 

At Union Service, in Ford's Opera House, Baltimore, Maryland. , 

*' There were many strong men before Luther, and 
many powerful minds contemporary with his, but 
Luther was the embodiment of all of them. He was 
the Colossus of the noble gallery; the giant of the 
group. In the galaxy of stars in the Reformation 
Luther shone the brightest, and penetrated the gloom 
of that age. He was a man in appreciation of whose 



298 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

services the Protestant heart bows in rapture. His 
name and fame descend through generations. Luther 
was not a sectarian man, but belonged to the whole 
Christian church. His name and works are now more 
frequently mentioned, and his books more read, than 
ever before. In the month of October, 365 years ago, 
his great work was begun, and he took his stand 
against the corruption of the Church of Rome. Others 
had attacked the errors of that church before him, but 
they made a mistake in assailing the bad morals, rather 
than the unscriptural doctrine. There had been no 
extended exposure of the false teachings of the Romish 
Church until God brought out Martin Luther to do 
this work. Luther, who had himself been a monk and 
a priest, was to be the leader of the Reformation. His 
righteous soul was filled with holy ardor. Like Elijah, 
he thundered truths into the ears of princes and all the 
people. Instead of images, rosaries, confession and 
indulgences, he pointed to the Lamb of God. He 
made the truth triumphant, and the Gospel became 
free. All previous efforts had been fruitless. The 
cardinals and bishops had time and again promised 
reformation, but failed. Luther aroused the attention 
of the multitudes. No original faith was preached by 
him, but only the true doctrines of Christ. The old 
faith was brought out from the rubbish, from the 
human additions and abuses, and it was made fresh 
and pure. Protestantism was freshened and cleansed 
after the circus advertisements and the trash which 
had surrounded it. It had been hid under a bushel. 
Luther lifted it off. He raised the curtain, and let in 
the light of truth in all its brilliant splendor. Salva- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



299 



tion by faith was superseded by works. The light of 
science had been extinguished; hterature had pined in 
monastic ceils ; the priesthood was the slavish horde 
of the tyrannical usurper of God's throne ; the people 
were superstitious : but out of all this Luther brought 
the truth triumphant. With the Bible that gave lib- 
erty to Luther, he gave libert}^ to the world. The 
Romanists have now to believe what the church pre- 
scribes, to take all on credit; we require proof from 
the Scriptures. The Romanist beheves what the 
church teaches; we, what the Bible teaches. We re- 
ject the mediation of the Virgin Mary, though we 
respect her memory. We have no earthly mediator. 
Above the portals of the gateway of Protestantism, 
illumined by the Star of Bethlehem, is the motto, 
'Believe and live.' The Reformation was not a 
human work. The world was in a ferment at the 
time. The people were looking for some great change 
to come, and God endowed Luther with daring cour- 
age, burning zeal, devoted piet}' and great learning, to 
accomplish this. He translated the Scriptures into his 
own glorious German language. He w^as a genuine 
hero. It was Luther's humanity that made Protest- 
antism the religion of the household, as Catholicism 
had been the religion of the state and of the cathedral. 
All Christians should commemorate him by the study 
of his life and work, and by studying the era of the 
Reformation. 

"Through him the church was emancipated from 
thraldom. The might)' Luther with his goose-quill 
pierced the superstitions, and God's house was purified 
from all idolatry. The pulpit was brought back to 



300 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

its proper purpose, and no longer was a platform from 
which to sell indulgences and medals. How, then, are 
we to account for the universal enthusiasm of the 
Protestants at this time? Is Protestantism in peril? 
No ; it never stood firmer. That which did not exist 
four hundred years ago now controls 488,000,000 of 
people, and on the other hand the Romish Church 
controls 280,000,000. Protestantism is more powerful 
than ever. In the Sunday-schools the gospel is being 
taught to five million children. It is Protestantism 
that sets up free government, builds churches, stimu- 
lates thought, encourages science and business, and 
keeps the Lord's day. This does not look as if Pro- 
testantism was declining." — Baltimore Amencan. 

ASSOCIATE JUSTICE STRONG, 

In Memorial Lutheran Church, Washington, D. C. 

" In all times some man comes forward who, as a 
leader, is greater than all his fellows. Martin Luther 
is the most conspicuous instance of how God brings 
such leaders up to do his work. Luther is the father 
of Protestantism ; he breasted the opposition of the 
whole world, and brought man face to face with 
his God without the intervention of priests. Such a 
man is one of the most beneficent gifts of God to 
mankind. Hundreds of millions to-day all over the 
world thank God for Luther's life and work. Luther 
can be regarded as the author of the civil liberty 
that is enjoyed to-day. At the time he wrought the 
world was under the dominion of the Catholic church, 
which claimed to rule the thoughts and actions of men, 
both in civil and religious things. He translated the 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



301 



Bible into the German language, and spread before his 
countrymen the ethics and principles underlying re- 
ligion and freedom of life. From the hour that this 
publication was made, civil liberty sprang into birth, 
and became a possibility for men. There can be no per- 
fect civil liberty anywhere except it is founded on the 
general ethics and teaching of the Bible. The golden 
rule is the basis of all good government, and the ad- 
monition of 'As ye would have men do to you, do ye 
even so to them,' is the corner-stone upon which the 
civil liberties of the world rest to-day ; and in distribu- 
ting the Bible so widely as has been in the United 
States, it follows as a natural consequence that in no 
country has civil liberty and that freedom which is 
bound to flourish reached such growth," — National 
Republican, Nov. 12, 1883. 

W. A. BARTLETT, 

Of Washington, D. C. In Memorial Lutheran Church. 

" Rev. W. A. Bartlett then delivered a brief address, 
in which he contrasted the lines of Luther and Calvin. 
Dr. Bartlett said that Luther and Calvin were hardly 
two characters that would be suggested for comparison 
or contrast. He had visited the birth-place of the 
great Reformer, the church in which he last preached, 
and the spot where he had rendered up his spirit to 
God. The place seemed pervaded by the intense 
spirit of that great man. At Geneva he had wandered 
over the ground where Calvin had performed his 
great works. The character of Luther was that of the 
largest German man, and in his sphere Calvin was the 
largest Frenchman. One was a man of the people, 



202 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

working with brawn and brain. The other worked in 
narrow Hnes, but to the same great end by different 
means. The criticism that Luther was a narrow theo- 
logian was an absurdity, for with all his rich German 
blood and intellect he would have seized the Greek 
language even as he would have seized the devil to 
make the Bible plain to his people, and his work at 
Wartburg bore testimony of his indomitable energy 
and rare intellect. At the age of twenty-seven Calvin 
had produced the clearest system of divinity ever pub- 
hshed to the world. Calvin and Luther were alike in 
their courage; each feared only to do wrong. At 
Worms before Charles V., and in every situation that 
surrounded him, he had hurled his defiance at all who 
opposed his life-work. Calvin worked under other 
conditions, which involved the giving up of every 
worldly prospect, and a life of sacrifice and self-denial. 
Yet he had organized the theological body of the Re- 
formation, which up to the present moment, com- 
manded the admiration of the intellectual world. 
Some deeds, it was true, could be admitted of both 
that in the light of to-day were great wrongs; but 
these were the flies in the amber of their manhood, 
and by the preponderance of the good showed that 
they were but men. These two men never met, but 
in their fellowship in Christ, made majestic by the 
great truths to which they devoted their lives, Calvin 
was the great theologian, Luther the great Reformer, 
for no one mentioned Reform but his name was the 
only one suggested. He was the heart, the centre, 
and the motive power that had sent down to us civil 
and religious liberty." — National Republican^ Novem- 
ber 12, 1883. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. ^03 

HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

" The value of man is not to be estimated by what 
he is worth in this world. From the standpoint of 
political economy, he is worth only what he can do. 
Ten thousand times ten thousand men are in the way. 
They have nothing for life, and life has nothing for 
them. It is a marvel why they were born. There is 
another way of measuring men, and Luther had a hand 
in introducing it. He gav^e the open Bible to the com- 
mon people. They were prepared for the seed. God's 
wheat was there ; but there had been wrapped around 
it perfumed nonsense, swathes and bandages, that shut 
out the light. Luther cut it open, sowed the wheat 
which he found there, and you are part of the product. 
You cannot tell what a man will be by what he is here. 
You cannot tell until he has come into the full posses- 
sion of his royal nature. It is the value of the indi- 
vidual man by reason of his origin from God, and his 
destination hereafter, that the Reformation brought 
out. Previously he had been considered worth noth- 
ing, except to make churches and states of Man as 
a unit had no value, only organized man possessed 
value. The difference between the Protestant and the 
Roman Catholic faith is the difference between the in- 
dividual relation in man and the corporate relation. 
All our popular institutions have been founded upon 
this sense of the dignity of a man not by reason of 
what is in him, but because of the destiny which God 
has conferred upon him. For this the Puritans strove, 
and they sprang from the loins of the Reformation. 
They were filled with this sense of the value of man 



304 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



as an individual. What is the consequence? In every 
State between the two roaring oceans we have a frame- 
work of government made expressly in the interest of 
the individual citizen. Multitudes come to our shores 
disowning the Word of God out of which came the 
liberty they enjoy here. If there be one single doc- 
trine that the American people cannot afford to lose, 
it is the doctrine of manhood as established in the 
genius of Christianity. Our civil liberty is the result 
of the open Bible which Luther gave us."— 7;^ St. 
Matthew's Lutheran Church, Brooklyn. 

G. W. MILLER, 

In the Spring Garden Methodist Church, Phila. 

" Luther, take him all in all, like the lovely German 
masterpiece which exhibits in one glow of associated 
beauty the pride of every model and the perfection of 
every master, presents us with the combination of all 
those high and rare qualities of human nature which 
we ordinarily find separately in men. He was no ideal 
saint; he was thoroughly human, and this is the pecu- 
liar glory of him. He touched human nature on all 
sides, and always with the masterly touch of power. 
He had the power above most men of acting as a kind 
of tongue to human nature. The passions, the traits 
and the motives he pictured were always elemental, the 
very ground-work of human action and interest in all 
conditions of life ; and he painted these things, not as 
if they were outside of him, but with that sympathy 
which makes the difference between a dead and a 
living language. 

" The Romanists are trying to obscure this colossal 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



305 



character, but it will stand an inspiration to all men 
and a glory for all time. A little water wrought into 
a mist will obscure for a time his native Thuringian 
mountains, but when the mist has cleared away the 
mountains will remain in their grandeur. So, when 
the temporaiy fog of detraction is lifted, Luther will 
stand out in his unhidden and peculiar glory, casting 
his ' image on the current of the ages as the mountain 
mirrors itself in the river that winds at its foot.' 

"What made this man great? First of all, great 
nature. Luther is immense. There is a great deal of 
him, body, mind and soul, and the glory of it all is 
that it is all real. He had grip, the power to take hold 
and to hold on. He had grasp — the ability to com- 
prehend subjects in themselves and in their relations. 
He had greatness — the capacity to seize and move and 
mould other minds and hearts, and to put his personal 
impress on all whom he touched. In one word, there 
was quantity of being, as well as quality, in which his 
greatness rooted itself But nature alone never made 
any man really great. 

" There was great personal endeavor. What a life ! — 
genius wedded to industry ! He had no idea of life 
apart from work. He cultivated a genius for work. 
Every faculty was brought into harness and every 
fragment of time was improved, so that his attainments 
were more many-sided than any man of his age, and 
there is hardly a problem of modern times that he did 
not touch. Still, we have not reached the true secret 
of his greatness. He might have used his vast and 
varied gifts and his capacity to work for selfish ends. 
Then we should have had to mourn that another page 



3o6 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 



had been added to the record of human frailty, and 
yet it would have been but a specimen in larger type 
of the moral and spiritual failure that so many men 
have painted in smaller type upon their allowance of 
time and opportunity. There is another element in his 
greatness. 

"Thirdly, he had great trust in Providence. The 
Emperor or the Pope might be in league against him, 
but there was another order looming behind the veil. 
It only awaited God's time. And they who had gone 
out of an idolatrous church would find in the end that 
Christ and not anti-Christ ruled the world. In this 
faith Luther lived and died, and here, at last, you 
have the full secret of his greatness — great nature 
wedded to great personal endeavor, ■ and both alike 
wedded to Divine Providence — these three, but the 
greatest of these is Providence." 

CHESTER D. HARTRANFT, 

Professor of Church History in Hartford (Conn.) Theological Seminary. 

" The address proposed to treat Luther, not from a 
logical or biographical standpoint; not from his life, 
but from his ideas. 

" I. The first great idea and consequent force was 
the restoration of the true source of Revealed The- 
ology; (i) negatively, by the overthrow of speculative 
philosophy and reason; by the overthrow of dogma- 
tism, established by church authority and tradition; 
by the overthrow of mysticism ; (2) positively, by the 
instauration of the Bible as the only source. 

" II. The second great idea was the instauration of 
the noviun orgammi for accumulating the facts of the 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



307 



Word; (i) exegetical theology, Luther's view of 
Sacred Philology, especially as to the language, gram- 
mar, lexicon ; views of canonics, views of textual criti- 
cisms; laws of interpretation, overthrow of allegory, 
his own commentaries and his noble version ; (2) his- 
torical theology, biblical, ecclesiastical. 

" III. The third great group of ideas and forces was 
derived from the application of the novum organum to 
the source, the Bible: i. In dogmatics eminently: 
(a) Dogma of the Holy Spirit, {h) The soteriological 
dogmas, (a) faith, (b) universal priesthood of believers. 
(c) Ecclesiological dogma: doctrine of the Invisible 
Church, Luther's scheme of polity, national, demo- 
cratic, collegiate: his efforts at effecting fellowship; 
the compulsory definition of the dogmatic and ethical 
positions of the Curia. 2. In religion: Spirituality as 
the most eminent Protestant religious trait. 3. In 
ethics : Principally, the doctrine of Christian liberty on 
its human side, or genuine individualism. 4. In mo- 
rality : {a) The Protestant idea of the family as asserted 
by Luther. (^) The Protestant idea of education as 
indicated by Luther's attitude towards Humanism, [c) 
Anti-monasticism, or the Protestant idea of life in the 
world. ((^) The Protestant idea of State. 

" IV. The fourth group of ideas and consequent forces 
from the reconstruction of Practical Theology, notice 
particularly: i. The Protestant idea of the sermon 
and office of the preacher as illustrated by Luther. 2. 
The Protestant idea of Liturgies, especially Luther's 
use and view of music ; the Protestant theory of music. 
3. The Protestant idea of Catechetics as inaugurated 
by Luther. 



308 TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

"V. The career of Luther — a proof that there is a 
special Providence in History. 

*' VI. The career of Luther — a proof that the King- 
dom of God is the kernel shaping force of human 
history." 

J. S. McINTOSH, 

Pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pa. 

" There are men who belong to a year, to a decade, 
to a period; there are men who belong to the ages, 
and live for all time ; there are men, fresh and forci- 
ble, who belong to a city, to a country, to a continent, 
and men who belong to the world; there are men who 
belong to a particular class, to a circle, to a single defi- 
nite movement, to a special field of distinct struggle, 
and men who belong to the wide realm of our com- 
mon humanity, to the round globe of varying interest, 
manifold thought. These men, to whom nothing of 
humanity is alien, are the strong, true men to gather 
around and to learn from. 

"Art, literature, science, politics, have their universal, 
immortal, many-sided chiefs: and shall the Church, 
guardian mother of highest song and sublimest prose, 
friend of the truth and teacher of the perfect law, not 
have her imperial spirit? Yes, verily, all down her 
line she has furnished these king-like children of the 
King of kings. And, curious enough it is, they meet 
us by threes, these mighty, over-topping heroes of the 
hosts of God — Moses, Samuel and Elijah — Peter, John 
and Paul — Luther, Calvin and Knox. Among these 
stands midmost, manly, merry, massive, masterly Mar- 
tin Luther, monk of Erfurt, man of the Great Emanci- 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 



309 



pation — a * great mother man,' ' sovereign of the great- 
est revolution,' prophet, idol-breaker, bringer-back of 
men to reality, for whom these centuries, and many 
yet to come, will be thankful to Heaven. 

" This man, whom grace made humble and God 
made great, belongs to the world's centuries, the 
broadenincr thought, the dominant forces, the farthest 
reaching influence of to-day and to-morrow. He be- 
longs to the Church Universal ; his life labors are hit- 
ting mightily within the Romish pale, as well as with- 
out. The Council of Trent and the Westminster 
Assembly, the wily Gant and William Carey, are all 
linked, though by different bonds, to the Monk of 
Erfurt — scholar, singer, sage, statesman, saint, a joy to 
real men, triumph and trophy of God's Son and Spirit. 
God we glorify in recalling the man. God's hand and 
His grace are manifest in the earnest boy of Eisenach, 
the ardent student of Erfurt, the God-fearing Reformer 
of Wittenberg, and the popular preacher of Northern 
Germany. Dead, he yet lives; Luther, child of the 
long past, and father of tljfe fertile future, Reformer of 
the Reformers, poet of poets, head of the column, with 
Calvin, his superior in subtle analysis, on the one side, 
Knox, his superior in administrative statesmanship, on 
the other, himself chiefest of the three mighties, hero 
of the faith fight, with spirit resplendent, yet humble, 
conservative, yet radical — great man of God, we honor 
and glorify thy Maker ! 

" Great man of the centuries ! we will honor thee, 
and glorify God in thee : for clearer than the hand of 
the Caesars, or Constantine, or Charlemagne, we see 
thy hand, commanding thy position and controlling 



310 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER, 



thy influence. This service is no secret canonization. 
In Luther, the popular preacher of Northern Germany, 
we see grace triumphant. During his boyhood he 
grew in reflective wisdom. When the time for the 
struggle came, he was already a trained athlete. God 
calmed him before he flung him into the battle, 
Luther's words were half-battles. Christ he pro- 
claimed to rich and poor, to the scholar and to the 
peasant. Like the other great Reformers, he was a 
preacher of great sermons, of the marvelous word of 
God. He was a man who loved truth to the utter- 
most depth of his soul. He loved the truth, and it he 
must have. 

" Every inch a man, an accurate student of philos- 
ophy, ethics, an educated lawyer, a thoroughly sound 
theologian, a close, conservative thinker, a skilled 
rhetorician, a fiery-tongued orator, poetic, historical, 
the common people heard him gladly, and men's souls 
were taxed to the uttermost by his profound thinking. 
Thus preaching, expounding, thus writing hymns and 
composing tunes, thus planting schools and fostering 
colleges, thus fighting papacy and denouncing despot- 
ism, for twenty years went on the genial, generous, 
great-hearted man. Grace marked all his years. God 
upheld him through life's battle, nor failed him when, 
smitten fatally, he lay down to die in the little town 
where he was born, baptized, and consecrated to God. 
He was a man among men. He loved the children, 
he knew their games; he knew the doubts of the 
thoughtful, the sorrows of the bereaved; and, Paul-like, 
he became all things to all men to win them to Christ." 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. ^II 



THE LUTHER MONUMENT. 

BY JOEL SWARTZ, D. D., 

Pastor of St. James' Lutheran Church, Gettysburg, Pa. 

Come, let us build a monument 

To Luther's mighty fame ; 
Let's carve upon it high and deep 

The great Reformer's name. 

In this his fourth Centennial year, 

Let freemen o'er the earth 
Unite to celebrate with cheer 

His own and Freedom's birth. 

For who among the sons of men 
For man, as Luther wrought ? 

Who for the right against the wrong 
Such mighty battles fought ? 

He smote old Error's rusty chain, 
And crushed its links to earth ; 

And to unfettered Thought again 
He gave a second birth. 

Now, as the mighty centuries roll 

And waft his power abroad, 
Still pleads his ever-growing soul 

For freedom and for God. 

How can we build to such a name ? 

What shall the structure be ? 
It ought to be a shaft of flame 

To light the land and sea. 

A marble column, mountain high, 
Tho' crowned with molten gold. 

Would, to a large, discerning eye, 
Seem dwarfed and dead and cold. 



But Luther hath his monuments — 
Not wrought of bronze or stone; 



312 



TRIBUTES TO LUTHER. 

These hath he too, poor, lifeless forms, 
Not his, but ours alone. 

Dost ask for his memorials true? 

And what their structure be ? 
Lift up thine eyes, enlarge thy view. 

Sweep o'er the land and sea. 

For over these a light is born, 
Whose blush the blue arch fills; 

It seems as if a second morn 
Glowed on the golden hills. 

Great Luther found the fettered Word, 

The lamp of light divine, 
Uncased the candle of the Lord, 

And trimmed and bade it shine. 

As Mary's fragrant spikenard poured 

Is her memorial true. 
So the unsealed and preached Word 

Is his memorial too. 

Where Faith and Love their spires uprear 

To greet the rising sun, 
There Luther's monuments appear, 

For there his work is done. 

But in this fourth centennial year 

Let's build a monument. 
Some thankful token for the good 

The Reformation sent. 

Build ye who will the bronze, the stone— 

A work which cannot grow ; 
Perhaps 'twill make his features known 

Whose life we strive to know. 

But come and build the mighty work 
Which his brave hands begun ; 

Tho' grand its vast proportions be. 
The work is not yet done. 



SPEAKERS' TRIBUTES. 

Ye who the name of Luther boast, 
And who his work would share, 

Cease, first, your Babel strife of tongues, 
Your war of words forbear. 

Close up the chasms which divide 

Your fierce, sectarian bands ; 
Your shibboleths of party hide, 

And clasp fraternal hands. 

Then build in faith, but build in love. 

Build first yourselves in one ; 
O what a monument were reared, 

If this grand work were done ! 

Then with the open Bible haste 

To meet its friends or foes ; 
Beneath your feet the desert waste 

Shall blossom as the rose. 

Build schools and churches, conscience, laws 

On every continent; 
Thus, as ye build great Luther's cause. 
Ye build his monument. 
Ltitheran Observer, July ij, iSSj. 
14 



313 



INDEX. 



A. 

PAGE 

Abbott, Dr. Lyman .... 148 

Adams, Charles 126 

American, The 186 

American Wesleyan, The . . 175 

Arkansas Methodist, The . . 175 

Armitage, Dr. Thomas . . . 206 

Arndt, Ernest M 35 

Atterbury, Francis 26 

Audin, J. M. V 60 

B. 

Baltimore American, The . . 191 

Baltzly, Rev. J, B 296 

Bancroft, Dr. Aaron .... 32 

Bancroft, George 8^ 

Baptist, The National. ... 151 

Barrows, Dr. John H. . . . 275 

Bartlett, Dr. W. A 301 

Bayle, Pierre 25 

Bayliss, Dr 260 

Beecher, Henry Ward . . . 303 

Bengel, Johann A 28 

Bikle, Prof. P. M 258 

Bittinger, Dr. J. B 65 

Boardman, Dr. Geo. Dana . 231 

Bossuet, Jacques B 21 

Bower, Alexander 33 

Brentz, Dr. John 17 

Briggs, Prof. C. A 280 

Brooks, Dr. Phillips . ... 211 

Bucer, Dr. Martin 17 

Buckley, Dr. J .M. ... 77, 154 

Buddeus, Johann F 27 

Bunsen, C. C. J 45 

Bunyan, John 22 

y C. 

•^Calvin, John 18 

^--'^arlyle, Thomas 49 

^.^halmers. Dr. Thomas ... 43 

(3 



PAGH 

Charles, Mrs. Eliz. R. . . . 128 

Chemnitz, Martin 20 

Chicago Inter-Ocean, The . 192 

Christian Advocate, The . . 154 

Christian at Work, The. . . 164 

Christian Evangelist, The. . 181 

Christian Guardian, The . . 180 

Christian Hour, The . ... 179 

Christian Index, The .... 186 

Christian Leader, The ... 168 

Christian Union, The. . . . 148 

Clarke, Dr. James Freeman . 97 

Claude, Jean 21 

Colburn, S. G 175 

Coleridge, Samuel T. . . . 36 

Collyer, Dr. Robert 207 

Conrad, Dr. F. W 285 

Conrad, Prof. V. L 125 

Contents 7 

Cox, Dr. F. A 40 

Coxe, Bishop A. C 97 

Coxe, William 31 

Cummings, Dr. Joseph ... 66 

Curtis, Geo. W 96 

Cuyler, Dr. Theo. L. . . . 199 

Cyclopedia Soc. DifF. U. K. 134 

D. 

D'Aubigne, Merle 49 

Dedication I 

Doederlein, Dr. Johann C. . 28 

Dollinger, Dr. J. J. I . . . . 56 

Domer, Dr. S 222 

Dorner, Prof. LA 95 

E. 

Editors' Tributes 141 

Edwards, Rev. Robt. A . . 284 

Emerson, Geo. H 168 

Encyclopedia Britannica . . 136 

Erasmus II 

Evangelist, The N. Y . . . 157 

5) 



3i6 



INDEX, 



F. 

I Farningham, M., Poem by 
Ferris, Dr. John M . 

Fick, H 

Field, Henry M . . 
Fink, Dr. Reuben . . 
Fisher, Prof. Geo. P . 
Fox, Dr. L. A . . . 
Francke, A. Herman 
PVederick the Great. 
Frisbie, Dr. A. L . . 
Frothingham, O. B. . 
Froude, James A. . . 

G. 
Gage, Dr 

Garrison, I. H. . . . 

Gelzer, M 

Gerhard, John. , . . 
Gilbert, Dr. D. M . . 
Gordon, Rev. E. C . . 
Gotwald, Dr. L. A. . 
Greenwald, Dr. E. . 



H. 
Hagenbach, Dr. K. R . . 

Hall, Thomas C 

Hallam, Henry 

Hardwick, Archd. Chas . 

Hare, Arch. J. C 

Harsha, Wm. J 

Hartranft, Prof. CD.. . 

Hartzler, H. B 

Hase, Karl August . . . 

Hawkins, Dr. J 

Headley, J. T 

Hedge, Dr. Fred. H. . . 

Heine, Heinrich 

Herder, Johann G . . . . 

Herr, Hon. A. J 

Heydecker, E. L 

Hodge, Dr. Charles . . . 
Hoppin, James M . . . . 

Hott, J. W 

Huff, Rev. H. M. G . . 
Hyacinthe, Pere 



I. 
Illustrated Chr. Weekly, The. 

Independent, The 

Intelligencer, The Christian. 



145 
64 

157 

289 
121 
281 
24 
29 
224 

115 
III 



244 
181 

52 
20 
278 
240 
247 
249 

60 

179 

40 

64 

53 
179 
306 
161 

58 

171 

92 

203 

41 

30 

225 

120 

66 

48 

163 

285 
276 

159 
141 

145 



J. 

PAGB 

Jacobs, Dr. H. E loi 

Jay, Hon. John 267 

Jeffers, Dr. W. H . ... 114 

Johnson, W. H 181 

K. 

Kahnis, Dr. K. F. A. . . . 47 

Kidder, Bishop 44 

Kingsbury, Rev. O. A. . . 159 

• Krauth, Dr. C. P 67,131 

Krotel, Dr. G. F 292 

L. 
Lessing, Gotthold E. . , . 29 
Library Universal Knowl. . 133 

Long, Dr. J. C 97 

Loy, Rev. M 274 

Lutheran Standard, The . . 156 
Lutheran Visitor, The . . . 171 
Luther at the Marburg 

[poem) 139 

Luther Centenary,The(/^£';;z) 197 
Luther's Hammer, [poem) . lo 
Luther Monument, The 

[poem) 131 

M. 

Mann, Dr. W. J 105 

McCIintock & Strong Cyclop. 131 

Mcintosh, Dr. J. S 308 

McPherson, Rev. S. J. . . . 266 

Melanchthon, Philip. ... 12 -— .1^| 

Messenger, The Evangelical. 161 

Michelet, Jules 54 

Miller, Joaquin, Poem by . 8 "*— 

Miller, Dr. Ephraim ... 128 

Miller, Rev. G. W 304 

Montgomery, Robert .... 62 

Morris, Dr. J. G 297 

Moseley, David B 168 

Murdock, H. J. & Co. . . . 167 

N. 
Nevin, Dr. John W. . . . 94 
Nevin, Wilberforce .... 125 
New Hampshire Journal, 

The 177 

Newton, R. Heber .... 109 



INDEX, 



317 



O. 

PAGE 

Observer, The N. Y. . . . 143 

P. 

Part 1 9 

Part II 137 

Part III 195 

Phil'a Press, The 189 

Plitt, Prof 77 

Preface 3 

Presbyterian, The 169 

Prime, Dr. S. Ireneus . 102, 143 

R. 

Ranke, Leopold 51 

Reed, Rev. Myron W. . . . 254 

Rees' Encyclopedia .... 134 

Reimensnyder, Dr. J. B. . . 279 

Religious Herald, The . . . 168 

Repass, Dr. S. A 235 

Reuss, Dr 36 

Rhodes, Dr. M 228 

Robinson, Hon. H. C. . . . 237 

Russell, William 55 

s. 

Schaefifer, Dr. C. W. ... 243 

Schaff, Dr. Philip 75 

Schaff-Herzog Encyclop . . 130 

Scholars' Tributes 11 

Seiss, Dr. Joseph A 208 

Shedd, Dr. Wm. G. T. . . 93 

Sheeleigh, Rev. M 294 

Smart, J. H 181 

Smeaton, Dr. George ... 127 

Smyth, Prof. Egbert C. . . . 84 

• Southey, Robert 39 

Spaeth, Dr. A 264 

Spalding, Dr. Geo. B. . . . 177 

Speakers' Tributes 199 

Spener, Philip Jacob .... 23 

Spurgeon, Rev. C. H. . . . 262 

Stang's Life 62 

Stork, Prof. C. A 70 

Storrs, Dr. R. S 211 

Strong, Justice (U. S.) . . . 300 



PAGE 

Swartz, Dr. Joel, Poem by 

I39>3ii 
Sweetser, Rev. E. C. . . . 290 
Swing, Prof. David .... 220 

T. 
Taine, H. A 61 

Talmage, Dr. T. DeW. . . 94 

Taylor, Bayard 69 

Taylor, Dr. W. M 270 

Telescope, The Religious . 163 
Tennison, Archbishop 
Thomasius, Dr. G. . 
Thorold, Rt. Rev. Dr. 



U. 



United Presbyterian, The . 167 

V. 

Van Arsdale, Rev. N. H. . 145 

Vermont Chronicle, The . . 172 
Von Amsdorf, Dr. Nich . . 17 

Von Oosterzee, Dr. J. J. . . 127 
Von Raumer, Fred L. G. . . 42 
Von Schlegel, Frederick . . 37 
Von Stolberg, Count ... 32 

W. 

Walther, Dr. C. F. W. . . 223 

Ward, Dr. W. H 141 

Wardner, Rev. N 175 

Warner, Chas. Dudley . . . 217 

Watchman, The 183 

Weiser, Dr. R 104, 261 

Wesley, John 28 

Wharton, M. B 186 

W. H. S., Poem by .... 197 
Wieland, Ernest Karl ... 30 

Wolf, Hon. Simon .... 277 

Y. 

Young, Dr. A. K. . . . . 248 

Z. 

Zabriskie, Dr. F. N %%^ 

Zwingli, Ulrich 1 9 



^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservatlonTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservatlonTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 089 933 1 ^ 





